


Whumptober 2018: WinterShock

by SeaSpectre160



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: "I can't walk.", "Stay", Adult Fear, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Amnesia, Attempted Kidnapping, Bad First Impressions, Bed Rest, Bedridden, Betrayal, Blood, Broken Bones, Bruises, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Has Panic Attacks, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Canoe Mishaps, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Caregiver, Child In Danger, Cockblocking, Concussions, Darcy Lewis is Pansy Parkinson's sister, Darcy Lewis is a Squib, Darcy Lewis is a self-rescuing princess, Darcy Lewis's Taser, Drowning, Electrocution, Eloping (sort of), Epilepsy, Exhaustion, F/M, Fever, Ficlet Collection, Fluffy Ending, Friendly Fire, Handcuffs, Harry Potter Crossover - Freeform, Hostage Situations, Huddling For Warmth, Human Experimentation, Hydra (Marvel), Hydra Ian Boothby, Hypothermia, I Love You, Insomnia, Kidnapping, Late Night Conversations, Lost in the Desert, Manhandling, Mario Kart, Miscommunication, Misogyny, Misunderstandings, More Exhaustion, Near Death Experiences, Nightmares, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Overprotective Thor, Paintball, Panic Attacks, Paralysis, Past Suicide Attempt, Poison, Post-Traumatic Epilepsy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Quarantine, Restraints, Seizures, Self-Hatred, Self-Sacrifice, Service Dogs, Severe Illness, Shovel Talk (sort of), Stabbing, Stranded, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Trigger Warnings, Truth Serum, Waterboarding, Whump, Whumptober 2018, broken ribs, drugged, harsh climate, heatstroke, punctured lung, showdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-07-20 09:27:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 40,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16134431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeaSpectre160/pseuds/SeaSpectre160
Summary: 31 whump prompts in 31 days, all centring around Bucky Barnes and/or Darcy Lewis.





	1. Stabbed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, all!
> 
> Ten years ago, I posted the first chapter of my very first published fanfic (not counting a few trashy crossovers I wrote in a notebook that will never see the light of day) on FanFiction.Net. It was a ‘Di-Gata Defenders’ fic called ‘Father and Son’. So, today, I’m celebrating by posting for a new fandom, as well as getting an early start on Whumptober (which is also something new for me).
> 
> These whump ficlets will all focus on Bucky and Darcy, although it won’t always be both of them. Some will be angsty (pretty much a given, since this is Bucky we’re talking about) and some will be funny. They will all be considered standalone ficlets unless stated otherwise (22 and 23 are both connected). If you want to participate as well, you can check out Whumptober on Tumblr for the full list.
> 
> I’m surprised at how much I’ve fallen in love with the WinterShock ship, despite the fact that Bucky and Darcy never ever interact in the MCU – they don’t even appear in the same movies!
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or any of the characters contained therein.

The Asset was accustomed to pain. It knew to check the source to ensure whether the damage was severe enough to cause problems for the mission, and to ignore it if that was not the case. Bullets, knives, blunt force… Unless it caused the Asset to become physically compromised in a way that could compromise the mission, it was irrelevant. So when a target’s bullet slammed into its right shoulder on a mission in Kiev, it didn’t even flinch. It just shot back and eliminated the target. Then it was a trip to the nearest facility, where it was repaired, wiped, and stored until its next assignment.

Darcy Lewis was ten year old the first time she felt her Soulmate’s pain. She was in the middle of dozing off in science class when a sharp burst of agony pierced her right shoulder. The school nurse quickly confirmed that it was a Soul Pain, and sent her home with a numbing medicine. Her parents were concerned when her uncle, an Army vet, identified the bruise as matching a gunshot wound. They wondered what kind of life their daughter’s Soulmate lived. Possibilities ranged from him (or her) being a criminal or a soldier or just an innocent person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even worse, the next day, she suffered an attack of some sorts, of blinding pain in her head that left her screaming and thrashing in her bed. It was only her mother’s intervention that kept her from launching herself right off the bed. And then she was overcome by a terrible chill, which eventually faded but never went away completely.

Throughout the years, Darcy would have brief, scattered incidents where she was wracked with those headaches, some preceded by a Soul Pain and followed by a cold spell. All of the Pains were violent in nature: gunshot wounds, knife wounds, and one time a huge bruise that covered her entire back. And she was always cold; it just spiked right after an attack. Every doctor she went to couldn’t find anything wrong with her bond, so all the trouble must have been on her Soulmate’s end.

It was a week before she and Jane were scheduled to move shop from London to New York – home of superheroes and shiny labs and science grants and Darcy actually getting _paid_ – that the situation happened in reverse. They were packing things up for the move, and Darcy went out on a coffee run, not just for Jane, but for the handful of Stark Industries and Avengers Initiative personnel who’d been sent over to help with the heavy lifting, as well as (Former) S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Barton, AKA the Avenger Hawkeye, who was there to help Thor with security. (There was, ostensibly, another guy there helping keep them secure from the shadows, but Darcy had yet to see him, or even learn his name.)

Of all the things Darcy was expecting to threaten her life in the near future, the list included (but was not limited to): aliens, HYDRA, A.I.M., anti-superhero extremists, anti-alien extremists, et cetera, et cetera. A random mugger with a knife had completely slipped her mind when making that list. Yet here she was, pressed up against a cold-as-fuck brick wall with the flat of a knife pushing against her throat and some asshole breathing garlicy pizza breath in her face. “Hand over your wallet, Luv,” Asshole growled, “And your mobile, and your jewellery. Nice and easy, and then we can both be on our way.”

Ugh, this was _unbelievable_! Instead of a sane emotional response, such as pants-wetting terror or just general fear, she felt a rush of embarrassment. All her friends these days were bona-fide superheroes, and here she was at the mercy of your garden-variety street criminal!

She had her Taser in her purse, but she needed to get Asshole’s knife away from her neck, first. The best way to do that, she figured, would be to lure him into a false sense of security by playing the spineless doormat (more commonly known as a sane person with no real combat training) and giving him what he wanted. So she reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone and her wallet. Then she pointed to her earrings. “Uh, d-do you want these, too? I- I mean, they’re just cheap costume jewellery-”

“Do you think I’m daft?!” Asshole snapped, “Hand them over!” Darcy did so, dropping the zirconia studs into his hands. “Good. Now, there’s just one more thing.”

The knife moved away from her neck, only to be replaced by something far more abhorrent: Asshole’s tongue trying to reach down her throat. She squawked, bit down on his tongue, and pushed him away, kicking him in the shin while she was at it.

“Slag!” Asshole swore and grabbed her again, slamming her against the wall even harder than before.

Darcy struggled, adrenaline giving her a strength she wouldn’t have known she had if she hadn’t lived through the Destroyer or the Dark Elves, but Asshole was much bigger than her, and it was all she could do to keep him from gutting her.

Then, suddenly, Asshole wasn’t there anymore. Instead, he was picking himself out of a pile of trash bags on the opposite end of the alley, and someone was standing in between her and him.

Darcy, sliding to the ground in relief, could only see that someone from behind, but it was definitely a man, with shoulder-length dark hair and an impressive build. He was wearing grungy jeans, combat books, and a black windbreaker. “It’s been a while,” he growled, “But I’m pretty sure that’s still not how you treat a dame.”

Asshole swore and got to his feet, but a pair of knives spontaneously materialised in Tall, Dark and Muscly’s hands, and Asshole clearly thought better of it, because he turned tail and ran, dropping Darcy’s stuff on the ground.

“You alright there, Lewis?” her hero suddenly asked.

“Wha-” she gasped, “How do you know my name?”

“Barton.” That one clipped response was all she needed, really. This must be the extra agent or whatever who’d come to help out.

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for the save, but I totally had him on the ropes.”

White Knight snorted. “ _Sure_ you did.” He turned around, and any retort Darcy was going to make died out in her throat when she recognised the face surrounded by curtains of dark brown hair that certainly weren’t there in the pictures she daydreamed over in history class.

“Holy _shit_ , you’re Bucky Barnes.”

Yeah, she’d heard the stories about him. How he miraculously _didn’t_ die falling off a train going like a hundred miles an hour into a Swiss ravine, got re-captured by HYDRA instead, and from there got brainwashed into being their top attack dog and put on ice like a Rocket Pop when he wasn’t needed, until those fuckers stupidly thought setting him on his best friend was a genius idea, and he wound up saving said best friend from them instead and then going on the run.

Exactly _how_ he went from _that_ to saving her from a mugger in London was yet to be seen.

Barnes looked at her assessingly, and that was when she realised that she was still sitting on the cold and dirty ground, her legs tucked up to her chest in something close to the fetal position. _Not_ the kind of first impression she would ever have wanted to make on him. He stepped forward and reached out with his right hand (she was pretty sure that was the non-metal one, but currently couldn’t tell for sure, since he was wearing gloves) to help her up, but then he winced and frowned down at himself, looking confused.

Without saying a word, he unzipped the windbreaker, revealing a plain grey T-shirt, which he then lifted up by the bottom hem. Yum, those abs, and ooh, that looked like it hurt! Right under his ribcage on his left side was a dark bruise, stretching about an inch wide almost horizontally but very thin vertically. Darcy had gotten more than enough Soul Pains to recognise, and she told him so. “Shit,” she hissed, “That looks like a stab wound!”

He stared at it, looking even more confused. “It’s not bleeding,” he noted, “And he didn’t even get his knife close enough to do this.”

Darcy shuddered. Adrenaline crashes were a bitch, almost as much as the shit that caused the rush in the first place. “You’re not the one who got stabbed,” she explained, “It’s a Soul Pain. Do you remember what those are?”

“…Yes. Does that mean…?” Now he looked worried, swallowing hard as he stared at the mark on his body that shows where his other half has been wounded. “It- It’s not in a vital area. A flesh wound.”

Darcy figured he, of all people, would know whether an injury was in a lethal spot. And they should probably get back to Jane and the others. When she said so, Barnes nodded in agreement and reluctantly put his shirt down, then once more reached down to help her out.

This time, Darcy took it, but as she started to rise to her feet, a sharp pain in her side brought her back down again. “Agh!”

Looking down at herself for the first time, Darcy was shocked to find a red stain on her white T-shirt. Before she could even blink, Barnes was kneeling next to her, peeling away her shirt much like he’d done with his own a minute earlier.

Right under her ribcage on her left side was a bleeding stab wound, stretching about an inch wide.

“Oh my God,” she gasped, “Holy shit! When-”

“Adrenaline can sometimes mask the pain,” Barnes told her, “He didn’t get in too deep, though. It’s just a flesh wound.” Then he stopped and realised what he just said. Their eyes met in shock.

“Holy shit,” they both breathed.


	2. Bloody Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, I know it’s not even October yet, but I’m posting this early for a few reasons: one, my 10-year posting anniversary was yesterday and I wanted to celebrate, and two, I will be unable to post on the sixth and seventh, so posting two days early can make up for that.
> 
> As of posting this, I only have Chapters 3 and 4 completed, and Chapters 5, 6, 22, and 23 partially written. I hope to get all of these done on time, but I can’t make any promises.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of its characters.

It was the sound of running water that woke Darcy up. Which was odd, because usually it was the sound of screaming that woke her up, if not the alarm on her phone.

Actually, back it up, that’s inaccurate. It was the sound of running water _plus_ the gasping breaths and choked sobs that woke her up.

She had sadly become accustomed to the fact that her wonderful boyfriend was plagued with horrific nightmares that frequently interrupted both his sleep and hers. She’d held him when he cried, held back his hair when the goriest nightmares had him puking into the toilet, and talked him down when he either held a knife to her throat or jammed himself into a corner in a panic.

Waking up to an empty bed, with Bucky all alone in the bathroom, apparently in some distress, was a new one, but she didn’t hesitate; she slipped out of bed, out of the bedroom, and across the hall to the bathroom.

Bucky was hunched over the sink, his whole body shaking, furiously scrubbing at his hands and breathing harshly in between whimpers and mutters. “No, no, no,” he gasped, “Come on, get _off_!”

“Bucky?” Darcy asked tentatively, “Are you okay?”

He whipped around, staring at her with haunted eyes, eyes that broke her heart. “Darcy?” he breathed, his voice trembling.

Her heart breaking just a bit, she stepped forward and went to embrace him, keeping her movements slow enough that he’d be able to read her intentions. And usually, he would let her. But today, he ducked away from her.

“Don’t,” he muttered, “You’ll get it on you.”

She frowned. “Get what on me?”

He turned back to the sink, resuming the process of scrubbing his hands and also his arms. “Can’t get it off. There’s so much- It won’t come off!”

“What won’t come off?” she asked softly, even though an idea was forming in her brain.

“The blood!” He practically choked on the word. “I can’t get it off! I’ll never get it off!” His scrubbing intensified, his left hand practically bruising his right and tearing up his fingertips, drawing actual blood.

Darcy sighed. “Babe…” She stepped up beside him and gently grasped his wrists. “Bucky, you’re still dreaming. The only blood on your hands is coming from you tearing your fingers open with all this scrubbing. Come on, look at me.”

He tore his eyes away from his hand and met hers.

“Bucky, I need you to wake up all the way, now, alright? What you were seeing isn’t real, okay? Just take a deep breath, and come back to me. Please.”

Bucky swallowed hard. “All those people,” he whispered, “All their blood… I killed them, Darce. Their blood is _all over me_.” He tried tugging his hands out of her grasp, but she held on. Thankfully, he wasn’t pulling nearly as hard as he could.

“That wasn’t your choice,” she reminded him, “You were just the weapon HYDRA aimed at them. But that’s all in the past. Come on, Babe, look at me.”

He shuddered, blinking a few times, then his eyes seemed to clear. “Darcy?” he whispered, “What was I…” He swallowed again, looking at his bloody hands. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” she assured him, “No, you didn’t. This is all yours. You were kind of pulling a Lady Macbeth in here, and you tore your fingers open a bit on the metal arm. We- Should we bandage these up?”

He lifted his right arm and examined it. “Not really,” he whispered, “They’ll heal.”

“Still, we should get the blood off. Gently, though, not like the way you were practically tearing your skin right off, earlier.”

He nodded silently, and remained quiet as she rinsed the blood off his hands and towelled them dry. Then he let her lead him back to bed and tuck him in, lying down behind him and running her hands up and down his back like her Mom used to do when she had bad dreams and would climb into bed with her and Dad.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered eventually, barely loud enough for her to hear.

She scooched closer in order to press a kiss to his temple. “You have nothing to apologise for.”


	3. Insomnia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major Bucky feels alert! No Darcy in this one, though.
> 
> All of this is un-beta’d, of course, so there will be typos.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of its characters.

Sleep was not something the Asset was accustomed to. The closest thing it ever got to rest was when it needed maintenance that was invasive enough that the technicians were required to sedate it for their own safety. That, and cryo-freeze, but that was simply a holding pattern, not giving the Asset the health benefits provided by sleep.

After it escaped HYDRA – he, after _he_ escaped HYDRA – he didn’t even factor sleep into his plans to continue evading them and the authorities and the man he pulled from the river. He was fully aware of what sleep _was_ , having killed many targets when it left them at their most vulnerable, but it hadn’t occurred to him that _he_ would need it. He made his way out of the city on foot for some time, stealing food and a jacket to cover up the metal arm. He intended to walk the whole way there, but after two days, he started feeling oddly weak, for no reason he could understand. Luckily for him, he came across a rest stop and, after nearly falling on his face twice, passed out on the nearest bench. Even more luckily, he wasn’t disturbed until after he had woken up hours later, the strange mental flashes of the man he’d fought, reaching out to him and screaming that name (“BUCKY!”) jerking him back into consciousness.

From that point onward, he made a point of factoring the fact that he would need a safe place to sleep from time to time. And he also quickly learned to dread those times, because he would experience violent mental images – nightmares – of various people dying in brutal ways, all from the perspective of the killer. It didn’t take him long to realise that they were his own memories, of past assignments. He woke up in a cold sweat every time, feeling sick enough to vomit up whatever meagre amount of food he’d managed to consume in the most recent hours (which also brought back memories of someone who looked like the man from the river, only much smaller, hurling into a toilet while his own hands rubbed his back). And they seemed to have no rhyme or reason; he had no idea when any of the events happened, or even if they were in any sort of order.

So he tried to go as long as he could without sleeping, but it was hard to balance that with maintaining constant combat readiness. He certainly never slept two nights in a row. He could go longer than the average human, but he still needed _some_ in order to function properly. Because if he didn’t, he tended to collapse at the most inopportune moments.

When the man in the river – Steve, his name was Steve, and _I knew him_ – finally caught up to him, he was going on ninety-six hours without sleep, having planned on getting some rest about forty-eight hours ago, only to stumble into an occupied HYDRA safe house and spend the following two days dodging those agents. He was exhausted, and was initially convinced that he was hallucinating from a lack of sleep. Until the very same HYDRA agents caught up to him seconds later, and the man pulled him behind cover as they opened fire in the middle of the crowded street market.

He got out of there with a bullet in his leg, and between the blood loss and his state of exhaustion, he passed out right on the floor of Steve’s getaway van.

He woke up three days later, in the medical wing of what he was told was called Avengers Tower. He’d been sedated for part of that time, while they treated his injuries, but had continued sleeping for hours after, until someone was brought in with a busted nose, and cried out ‘like a wimp’ (as Steve’s friend Sam described it) while it was getting treated. The shout woke him up, and it took nearly a dozen people to hold him long enough to get him sedated again, after he jumped out of the bed and mowed down a large number of people trying to find a way out.

When he woke up again, Steve was by his side, promising that this was a safe place, that he wouldn’t need to defend himself in here. He didn’t believe him, but when given a choice (a choice, there was something he was pretty certain he hadn’t been given in _years_ ) between a holding cell and a spare bedroom in Steve’s apartment, he chose the latter. Because the last time he dreamed, he dreamed of labs and pain and of Steve carrying him away from it all. (“I thought you were dead.” “I thought you were smaller.”)

But being in a safe place didn’t stop the dreams. Sam told him that they probably _were_ his own memories, and gave him a notebook to help him put them on paper and try to figure out how the disjointed fragments all fit together. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know all that, yet, but he recorded everything, in case he changed his mind in the future.

His sleep patterns didn’t change, however. He still didn’t sleep as often as the rest of the residents of the Tower. When Steve bade him goodnight, he waited until his old friend – yes, he could remember that they had been friends, now – had gone to sleep, then he secured the apartment door and stood watch, pacing the front room and checking out the windows, even if they were far too high up to be worried about anyone breaking in that way (snipers in other tall buildings were not out of the question, however).

When he did sleep, he pretty much always woke to Steve holding him down against the floor or the wall. His screams would wake Steve up, and when Steve tried to rouse him, he would react much like he had in the infirmary: violently.

As he grew used to his new surroundings, the list of his nighttime distractions grew. He spent a significant amount of time in the training gym, taking out his frustrations on the reinforced punching bags, which usually wound up breaking under his assault despite said reinforcement. He also took to patrolling the halls, sometimes crossing paths with one of Steve’s fellow Avengers, a man named Barton, who apparently had some experience of his own regarding being controlled and forced to hurt others against his will.

It got to the point where Steve suggested he use pharmaceutical methods to get himself to sleep, without any dreams to disturb him. The idea of voluntarily making himself so vulnerable was terrifying, and he protested vehemently. But after an incident where he passed out in the gym, right in front of Sam, too, there was no denying that he couldn’t keep going with this strategy. It was just going to cause him more problems. So, after extracting numerous promises from Steve to keep watch, he took some sleeping pills offered to him by one of the doctors, and spent the next ten hours dead to the world in his own bed.

He was pretty sure that it was the best sleep he’d ever had, since before the war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m not sure if I like where I left this, but here it is.
> 
> Next chapter prompt: “No, stop!”. It will be much lighter, and shorter. I’m not setting myself any maximum or minimum word counts with these. So while Chapter 1’s word count was in the 1600s, Chapter 4’s will be in the 500s.


	4. "No, stop!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, something much lighter than the past couple of angst-ridden chapters. Chapter 5 should be fully written by the end of the day, hopefully. Maybe even Chapter 6, too, so I’m not falling too far behind. As I mentioned earlier, I will be unable to post on the 6th and 7th; this is due to spending Thanksgiving (we celebrate it on the first Sunday of October here in Canada) in a place with no wi-fi. Chapter 7 should be up on Friday (the 5th) morning before we leave, and hopefully I’ll have Chapter 8 ready for when we get home Monday (the 8th) afternoon.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein. They are the property of Marvel Studios and Disney (I think).

“NO, STOP!”

He was just passing by her room when he heard it. He recognised Darcy’s voice, shrill and stressed, even through the walls of her apartment and despite the video game music playing inside. Wondering how the hell anyone could have gotten past Stark Tower’s security, let alone into the apartment, he didn’t think twice about busting the door down, drawing two of the knives he always kept on him.

“FUCKING MONKEYBALLS!”

The first thing he saw was Darcy, standing on the couch and then toppling over the back and out of sight.

The second was a big, blonde man coming at him with a large hammer.

* * *

“Okay, could someone _please_ explain to me what happened?” Steve asked for a third time (Howard’s son had already asked twice; they seemed to be taking turns with that question).

In the end, it was Jane Foster from whom they got a straight answer. The big blonde man (Thor, who was apparently back for his first visit to Earth since Bucky moved in) was too busy glaring at Bucky, Darcy had spent most of the incident on the floor, and Bucky himself honestly wasn’t sure what the hell had happened. As it stood, the four people who were actually present for the incident were sitting in the infirmary, both Darcy and Bucky holding ice packs to their heads, although Bucky figured he’d be all healed up pretty soon. Thor was already good to leave the infirmary (stupid Asgardian toughness).

“We were in Darcy’s apartment – me, Darcy, and Thor – and Darcy was showing Thor how to play Mario Kart. And Darcy _really_ gets into her Mario Kart, so she was jumping up and down on the couch while she was playing, and she started screaming and begging when Thor was about to shove her off the Rainbow Road-”

“Wait,” Bucky interrupted, taking a break from glaring suspiciously at Thor to stare at Darcy incredulously, “You were yelling about a _video game_?! I thought you were being attacked, or something!”

“Yeah, I figured that was it,” Jane commented, nodding, “So in comes Bucky, clearly thinking he was coming to the rescue, and Darcy was so startled that she fell off the back of the couch and whacked her head on the floor. And Thor went on the attack, and the two of them started fighting and trashing the place – and _ignoring me and Darcy_ when we _told you to stop_ – until you guys showed up and dragged them apart.”

Stark the younger shook his head in disappointment. “Seriously, Point Break, why is it that you always make a mess _every time_ you come to Earth?”

Steve glared over at him. “I seem to recall you _helping_ him make one of those messes.”

“Details, details.”

“So, can we just clear the air, here?” Darcy snapped, “Thor, this is Bucky, my BF, an Avenger, and a guy with a metal arm who’s ready to jump to the defense of anyone in this Tower. Bucky, this is Thor, Jane’s BF, an Avenger, and a guy with a magic hammer who’s ready to jump to the defense of anyone in this Tower. Both of you are allowed to be in here, and you’ve got a lot in common. So quit fucking glaring at each other, dammit!”

Both men ducked their heads at her chastisement.

“My apologies, Lady Darcy,” Thor grumbled.

“Sorry, Darce,” Bucky apologised.

“Thanks, guys,” she answered sweetly, “Now, shake hands and make nice.”

Both men exchanged disgruntled looks, glanced warily at the young woman who meant so much to the both of them, and shook hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There were so many ways I could think of going with this. Admittedly, the first concept that popped into my head was a ‘being raped in an alley’ kind of idea, but I’m not particularly comfortable with reading those, let alone writing them. So I went with humour, instead. Who said whump couldn’t be funny? In case it wasn’t clear, the whump in this chapter would be Darcy’s bump on the noggin and anything Thor and Bucky got in their fight.
> 
> Next up: Poisoned.


	5. Poisoned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or any of the characters contained therein.

It was a mistake. He thought he’d taken enough precautions that a dinner out with his girlfriend would be safe enough to take that risk. He’d booked the table under an alias, run background checks on all the employees, had Natalia and Barton do a perimeter sweep of the area beforehand, and arranged for armed backup just in case something went wrong.

Something must have slipped through the cracks.

It went well at first; he had specifically requested a table that would allow him to see the entire restaurant from his seat, and he and Darcy had selected a wine that wasn’t overly expensive, but still outside the price range they would normally limit themselves to. The waiter arrived in a decent time and delivered the wine before taking their order. Bucky hadn’t taken a drink right away, as he was still laughing about a story Darcy had been telling him about her time in New Mexico pre-Thor. But when he did, he froze.

He knew that smell. All his senses had been greatly enhanced by Zola’s version of the Serum, and HYDRA had taught him to use them very well. It was one thing to notice various sounds and smells that others couldn’t; it was another to be able to identify what they were. And he had the smell of every poison known to HYDRA committed to memory.

Cyanide. There was cyanide in his wine.

Without even stopping to say anything to her, he reached over and snatched Darcy’s wine glass out of her hand. Ignoring her protests and confusion, he sniffed it and found the same thing.

It was already half empty.

“Poison,” he told her, silencing her mid-word, “This wine’s been spiked with cyanide.”

She paled, looking at him with horror. “Oh my God,” she whispered, “Oh my God…”

He was on his phone with Natalia in less than a second, gripping Darcy’s hands with his free one. “Someone’s slipped cyanide in our wine. Darcy’s had half a glass already; we need medical.”

He was about to get up and look for the waiter, but he was distracted by a commotion at another table; a woman was in distress because her husband had just collapsed, and even from this distance, he recognised symptoms that suggested that cyanide was also the culprit there.

“It’s not just us; someone at another table’s had the same thing.”

Darcy’s fingers tightened on his hand, her breathing coming short and rapid. “Bucky?” she whispered, tears forming in the corners of her eyes, “Am I going to die?”

He brought up his hand still holding hers and kissed her fingers, listening to Natalia over the phone. “Romanoff says help is on the way,” he told her, “The nearest hospital and paramedics have been alerted, and our own backup is en route as we speak. You’ll be fine, Doll, I promise.” The fact that she hadn’t already collapsed indicated that she’d gotten a low dose. He couldn’t tell if her shortened breathing was a symptom of cyanide poisoning or just fear.

He heard the raised voices as the two Avengers Initiative agents entered the restaurant and started barking orders, but didn’t pay any attention to what they were saying. He kept an eye on the other people in the room, but none of them did anything to indicate they were involved. Many were scared, but that was a natural reaction to what was going on, even without knowing the whole picture.

By the time the medics had arrived, Darcy’s symptoms had worsened. She complained of a headache and dizziness, and her skin had taken on a distinctly reddish tone. “Bucky…” she gasped, her breathing getting worse, “Babe, I don’t feel very good.”

Bucky kept a hold on her right hand, even as the paramedics waved him to the side to treat her. “It’s okay, Doll,” he assured her, “It’s going to be okay.” He looked over at the medic. “Right?”

Either the paramedic he was talking to didn’t recognise him, or she didn’t care, but either way, her tone was very calm as she answered him. “We have a standard kit for treating cyanide poisoning. She’s got a good chance.”

Bucky turned his attention back to Darcy as the medic fitted a mask over her face. He knew what the standard procedure was: an inhaled dose of amyl nitrite, followed by sodium nitrite and then sodium thiosulfate, both through an IV.

“Bu- Bucky,” she gasped again, “I don’t-” She gasped again. “I lo- I love you.”

His heart stilled. They’d been dating for months, but they had never gotten to the stage of saying those words (at least, not out loud, as he had said it many times when she was asleep and couldn’t hear him). But for her to say it now… It felt like a goodbye.

“Come on, Darce, don’t say it like that,” he begged, “You’re going to be fine, Doll, I promise. You’ll be just fine. … Doll? … Darcy? … Darcy?!”

* * *

According to Natalia, it turned out to not be a targeted attack on Bucky or Darcy. Some disgruntled ex-employee (fired long before Bucky had run background checks) had gone off the rails, fashioned a cyanide solution from almonds, apricot pits, and other natural sources, and snuck into the kitchen and poisoned a few bottles of wine – and other inventory items – to get revenge for being fired.

Darcy and several other patrons were rushed to the hospital. The man who had first collapsed was in a coma, and they weren’t sure if he was going to make it or not. Darcy was unconscious, but she had a much better chance of recovery, according to the doctors.

Bucky didn’t leave her side, except occasionally to use the bathroom attached to her private room, and even then, he was as quick as he could possibly be. Jane and Thor joined him shortly after, and he glared defensively at anyone who entered the room and wasn’t an Avenger (as every single member on the roster came to visit at least once) – even the hospital staff.

Two days later, she woke up.

Thor had gone to get lunch for himself and Bucky and Jane. Jane was curled up in her chair, a hardcover book precariously balanced on her knee and threatening to slip off at the slightest shift. And Bucky was sitting on Darcy’s left, clutching her hand in both of his, running his right thumb over her knuckles but otherwise staying unnaturally still.

When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw, once her vision cleared, was his face.

The first words she heard out of his mouth were “I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, ridiculously sappy ending, I know.
> 
> The information about the standard cyanide poisoning treatment comes from Wikipedia.
> 
> Next chapter’s prompt: Betrayed


	6. Betrayed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, yet another HYDRA!Ian fic.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or any of the characters contained therein.

Darcy Lewis liked to think that she was no one’s fool. That she was an excellent judge of character. That she could spend five minutes with someone and know, just _know_ , whether or not they were good people.

Ian Boothby changed all that.

Their relationship started as a purely professional one. Or, at least as professional as someone as irreverent as Darcy could get, bossing him around, calling him ‘the intern’ no matter how many times he reminded her of his name, and ‘forgetting’ his favourite coffee order when he annoyed her (yes, Darcy still got the coffee – Ian was the _science_ intern, recruited to pick up Jane’s slack while she wallowed over Thor’s continued absence).

Then the jackass went and saved her damn life. In hindsight, he may have been saving his own skin, since the Dark Elves were liable to kill him as well as her, and she just happened to be saved as a mere side effect. But Darcy didn’t think about that. She was all full of adrenaline and ‘Oh, my hero!’ type thoughts, so she grabbed him and planted one on him, dipping him instead of the other way around because despite those thoughts, Darcy Lewis was no classic damsel, thank you very much!

After the Keebler Elves failed to conquer London, let alone Earth, what followed was a whirlwind of pure lust between Darcy and Ian. Life-threatening events had a side effect of forging bonds of trust between people who went through them together and came out alive because of that trust. She shared so much of herself with him, body and soul. She told him about her family, about her school friends, and all about New Mexico, a topic that was rarely breached before portals started opening all over the city and Thor finally deigned to show his face after a two-year absence.

Then S.H.I.E.L.D. fell.

Darcy, Jane, and Erik were sitting and watching the news reports on the disaster in DC. Captain America and Black Widow’s arrest, the Helicarriers, and HYDRA. Especially HYDRA. Thor was in the next room, trying to contact his Avenger friends for answers. Soon, he got a message instructing them to head to the Black Widow’s nearest safe-house, because they weren’t going to trust any of the official S.H.I.E.L.D. ones. They picked up Ian on the way. Once they were ensconced there, Thor went to pick up Hawkeye, who’d been in France when everything had gone down, and who was planning to hunker down with them until they figured out what the hell was going on.

It was after the God of Thunder left that Ian revealed his true colours.

He’d been a HYDRA spy all along, one of the ones installed inside S.H.I.E.L.D. Sitwell had arranged for him to get close to Jane, Erik, and Darcy, ostensibly for their protection. He’d been absent earlier in the day because those three had been on Project Insight’s hit list, and he obviously hadn’t wanted to be sitting right next to them when the missiles came, even though his true mission hadn’t been completely fulfilled, yet.

He pointed a gun at the three of them, and ordered them to hand over all the flash drives and the folder with Jane’s latest notes, the ones that hadn’t been transcribed and digitised, yet. Darcy, who, in case you need to be reminded, once shouted “I am not DYING for six college credits!”, started gathering up those items. She also would have discreetly fished her taser out of her purse when pulling out her Mew-Mew-shaped flash drive (because she also once tased the God of Thunder), but Ian saw that coming and made her hand it over.

But she also pressed the panic button on her cell phone while fishing out the flash drive and the taser. Hopefully, that would have Thor doing an about-face and coming right back to the safe-house and to the rescue.

Ian had her put it all into a duffel bag that he’d brought with him, holding the gun to Jane’s head to get her to cooperate. Darcy bided her time, waiting until he let his guard down to act.

Unfortunately, Thor’s return was accompanied by thunder that sounded from miles away. It was enough of a warning for Ian to grab Jane and put her in a headlock, the gun’s muzzle pushing against her temple. When Thor entered the safe-house, Mew-Mew brandished angrily, he froze when he saw his lady love being held hostage by one he thought to be a friend.

“Ian,” he said cautiously, “What have you done?”

Ian smirked, although it was clearly for show, because while he’d been stupid enough to join HYDRA, he evidently wasn’t actually stupid enough to feel confident about his chances against the Thunder God. “You’re going to let me leave,” he said, “Or your dear ‘Lady Jane’ is going to get a brand new hole in her head.”

“Thor…” Jane gasped.

Darcy sat, frozen, but her mind was whirring. She looked around the room. This was _the Black Widow’s safe house_ , after all. She _had_ to have a whole armoury of weapons hidden around the place. There was probably something within arm’s reach no matter where you were in here.

And she did find something. It wasn’t hidden, lying in plain sight instead. The main room had a lovely brick fireplace, and if you looked closely, you could see that some of the bricks on the mantle and the base had no grout attaching them to the others. It would be easy for her to reach over and pick one up, and when Ian turned his back on her, she did so and quietly slid over so that her butt was covering the gap, hiding the brick behind her back.

Thor slowly lowered his hammer. “If any harm comes to her, I swear-”

But Thor didn’t have to swear anything, because Jane – crazy Jane, who would eagerly drive into a tornado for Science! – decided to rescue herself. She grabbed Ian’s gun and shoved it away from his head, stomping on his foot for good measure. And once the firearm was no longer aimed at her bestie’s head, Darcy stood up and slammed her brick into the back of Ian’s skull.

The traitor crumpled to the floor, and Jane hurtled forward and into Thor’s arms.

Darcy stood over her now-most-certainly- _ex_ -boyfriend, the brick still in her hand. She had been the one to bring him into their circle. She had been the one to share their secrets with him. Who knew how much information he had passed on to his bosses because of her? And she had been the one to invite him into her _bed_. He could have killed her, so many times, and she never would have seen it coming. She’d never seen _this_ coming, after all.

“Darcy?”

The sound of Jane’s voice drew her out of her head. She was still standing over the unconscious HYDRA agent, still holding the slightly bloodstained brick in a shaking hand. It slipped from her fingers and thunked to the floor, making her jump.

And then the tears started. Hot, fat droplets that spilled from her eyes and rushed down her cheeks and splattered on her heaving chest as she struggled to breathe. She felt a pair of arms around her torso. Jane. Another person joined in from behind her. Erik. Thor came over and pulled them a bit away from Ian before putting his arms around all three of them.

Darcy buried her face in Jane’s shoulder, still gasping and shaking. She had _trusted_ Ian, and he’d nearly killed them all.

She would never trust so easily again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Personally, I never thought I’d write a HYDRA!Ian fic. I didn’t particularly like him, but I also didn’t hate him, either. And the HYDRA!Ian trope is so common, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it just because everyone else was. But this prompt just begged me to write it this way.
> 
> Next chapter’s prompt is ‘Kidnapped’. It will also be a humour chapter, and probably shorter (it’s not done yet).


	7. Kidnapped

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I’m heading off on a Canadian Thanksgiving family camping trip today, and I won’t be able to post again until Monday afternoon, my time. I will be bringing my laptop, however, and even if I can’t use it, I will also be bringing supplies to write hardcopy. So I should have a bunch of chapters ready to post when I get home.
> 
> Sorry this is so short.
> 
> Also, see if you can spot the NCIS reference and name (or at least describe) the episode.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or any of the characters contained therein.

Bucky’s pulse pumped wildly as he stared at the computer screen. He tried to control his breathing as he watched the video of his fiancée getting dragged into a van. This was something he’d been having nightmares about ever since he realised he felt that way about her – actually, it was one of those nightmares that had clued him in to his own feelings. Someone must have found out about their relationship, something they’d kept quiet from everyone except the Avengers and their closest associates (Jane, of course, and Pepper and Hill). HYDRA still hadn’t given up on getting him back under their control, and would view Darcy as the perfect tool for achieving that goal.

“When did this happen?” he asked, his voice flat.

“Three minutes ago,” Tony Stark responded, sounding equally tense, “She hit her panic button, and J.A.R.V.I.S. automatically locked onto her location and hacked into the nearest street cameras. He’s tracking the van, now.”

* * *

The Avengers were entering the warehouse the van had disappeared into twenty minutes later. According to J.A.R.V.I.S., the owner of said property was a company run by a man who had a distant familial relation to a known HYDRA agent, but was not listed as an actual member of the organisation, hence why it’d been off their radar before.

Bucky took down both security guards outside easily, just barely managing to restrain himself from doing any serious damage, as Steve’s voice in his ear reminded him that they could be uninvolved with this scheme, and if not, would be potential sources of information. The doors earned no restraint whatsoever, getting ripped off their hinges with a minimally satisfying screech.

There was the van. White panel, labelled with some generic phone company’s name on the side and no windows besides the front ones (Stark made an inappropriate-sounding crack about Darcy being significantly older than typical victims taken in such vans, something Bucky did _not_ want to ask about).

There was the sound of muffled screaming coming from within the vehicle. Bucky ran over as fast as he could, ripped the door open, and-

Jumped back as the heavy body of a man tumbled out and onto the concrete floor. The man was twitching spasmodically, the reason for that being the two thin, metal wires attached to his chest and leading back into the van.

Darcy Lewis stood there, stooped over due to the limited amount of space. She flashed a wicked grin at her fiancé. “Hi, babe,” she greeted him cheerfully, “HYDRA needs to train their goons better. Asshole focused more on copping a feel than actually searching me. Really, you’d think they’d know enough to take _your_ fiancée more seriously than your average lab monkey. And they only sent the one! I’m insulted, honestly.” The agent on the floor groaned, and Darcy pulled the trigger of her trusty taser again. “And stop looking up my skirt!”

Damn, as if he needed any more things to love about this woman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: ‘Fever’.


	8. Fever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m baaack! I’m full of turkey and homemade meringue cookies and other goodies, but I’m back! I’ve also got Chapters 9, 10, 17, and 22 complete, with 11 through 13 started.
> 
> See if you can spot the Arrowverse reference.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

Bucky Barnes knew he was a dead man the moment he woke up coughing and shaking. Sick men didn’t last long in here. Those who got too sick to work were carted off to the lab, and they were never seen alive again. God only knew what went on in there, but he and the other workers often heard screams coming from the locked room, and he’d once spoken with one of the men who’d been assigned the task of carrying the bodies out and burying them. That man had said that they were often horribly disfigured, some beyond recognition. The only one that had been described in detail had had a deformed, lumpy skull and blood streaming from his eyes. That was the fate that awaited him.

But he wasn’t going to roll over and just _let_ it happen. He would try to hold it off for as long as possible. He tried to stay awake on the factory floor, even if his hands were shaking and the fever left him dizzy and nauseous. If he passed out or threw up or even coughed too damn loudly, then his life was as good as over. Dugan was standing next to him, casting worried glances his way every so often, and sometimes even shifting to block him from view of the guards.

One second, he was tightening a bolt on one of those infernal machines, and the next, he was being yanked up off the floor by Dugan and Jones, who were both hissing at him to wake up and get back to work before the guards saw him in that state. Fate gave them a brief reprieve, in that none of the guards noticed his collapse.

They weren’t so lucky the second time around.

* * *

It burned.

Whatever it was that the mad scientist had injected him with, it burned.

Perhaps it was acid, because that was what it felt like as it crept through his veins, spreading the burning sensation throughout his entire body. The fever he’d been suffering from earlier had been nothing compared to this.

He didn’t know how long he’d been here. He had a vague idea of how long he and the other men of the 107th had been held in this goddamn facility since the work shifts and meagre mealtimes were scheduled regularly enough for them to keep track of the days. But he didn’t know how long it’d been since he’d been dragged into this hellhole of a lab.

He used to like science labs. It had been one of his best subjects in school. Even if he were to somehow live through this and go home, he’d probably never be able to set foot in one again without remembering this.

The heat and the pain in his body kept building and building. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore, and he screamed. He screamed until he finally lost consciousness, and slipped away into blissful silence.

* * *

He was woken by a harsh slap to the face.

It took him several seconds to remember where he was. He’d been dreaming that he was back home, with his parents and his sisters and Steve, and that he’d never had to go off to war in the first place. For several seconds, it felt like he’d fallen asleep in his childhood bed and started having a nightmare.

Except this was real, and he couldn’t wake up.

The pain was still there, although it had diminished, if only somewhat. His body still ached, still burned like he was trapped inside an oven.

The scientist talked excitedly, his voice high pitched and his words incomprehensible. The bastard probably wasn’t speaking in English, but it really didn’t make that much of a difference; in this state, he probably be able to distinguish and understand the words, anyway.

He kept repeating the same thing over and over: his name, his rank, and his service number, just like he’d been instructed in basic training. Just like he’d been doing before the pain had become too much to handle. Even after the scientist left the room, he kept repeating it.

Name, rank, and service number.

He thought he heard yelling from outside. Gunfire and explosions, too.

Name, rank, and service number.

The scientist had returned, and was scrambling around, stuffing papers into a briefcase.

Name, rank, and service number.

The scientist was gone again, leaving Bucky to die alone.

Name, rank, and service number.

“Bucky!”

A shockingly familiar face appeared before him. He had to be seeing things, the fever making him delirious. The straps holding him to the freezing metal table were removed.

“Is…”

“It’s me. It’s Steve.”

“Steve?”

“Come on.” Then Steve’s hands were pulling off the table and up onto his feet, holding him steady as he tries to catch his balance.

“I thought you were dead!”

The voice was definitely Steve’s, but the body was definitely not.

“I thought you were smaller.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have some tissues.
> 
> Next chapter: Stranded.


	9. Stranded

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I’d try my hand at a dialogue-only story.
> 
> Full disclosure, I wrote this while camping, and one of my parents’ favourite activities (but not mine) while camping is going canoeing. 
> 
> They were actually out canoeing while I was writing this and babysitting the dog.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

“I want it on record that this was _not_ my fault.”

…

“I mean, seriously, I _told_ the canoe rental guy that this thing was too old and worn to be safe!”

…

“I told _you_ that this thing was too old and worn to be safe!”

…

“I seriously thought you would have agreed with me!”

…

“Why didn’t you agree with me?! Then we wouldn’t be _stuck_ here, waiting for the others to come by and rescue us!”

“Wasn’t the canoe race _your_ idea?”

…

…

“Tony tricked me into it. You know how competitive he is, and how much of a pain in the ass he’s been this entire trip. I get it – we _all_ get it – Tony Stark does not _do_ unplugged.”

“It was still a bad idea. This was supposed to be a relaxing trip down the river, not careening through the water – where there are lots of rocks just below the surface – at thirty miles an hour.”

“And _whose_ fault is it that we were going so fast?”

…

…

“…I got caught up in the moment, I guess. Anything to get you to stop _screeching_ about how Thor and Jane were gaining on us.”

“Yeah, well, let’s just hope Thor and Jane will be the ones to pick us up. They’ll be the least insufferable about it. Or Hope and Scott. I mean, Scott will be insufferable, until Hope shuts him up. Same with Clint and Laura. Ooh, I bet T’Challa and Nakia would be real nice about it!”

“Too bad they didn’t come on this trip with us.”

“Yeah.”

…

“HEY, GUYS! A LITTLE HELP, HERE?!”

“The _fuck_ , Doll! Super-hearing, remember? Not so loud!”

“Sorry.”

…

…

…

…

“Shouldn’t _someone_ have caught up to us by now?”

“Maybe? … They weren’t going _that_ slowly. I could still see them when we turned left at that fork in the river.”

…

“What?”

“Weren’t we supposed to turn _right_?”

…

…

“Fuck.”

“Great. Now we’ve got to wait until they get back to the finishing point, realise we aren’t ahead of them anymore, and double back for us.”

“Not my fault!”

“ _You_ were the one steering!”

…

…

“The canoe is still a piece of crap. Think we can sue the rental place for renting out unsafe boats?”

“I think we were going too fast for that argument to stick.”

“Yeah, but it was practically falling apart! I mean, we bumped – just _bumped_ – into one of the other rocks, earlier, and I _swear_ there was water leaking through that ‘scratch’ on the side. That’s not a scratch, that’s a crack! A crack in the boat! _Not_ safe! We should be back safely on shore by now, not soaked to the skin and sitting on a wet boulder in the middle of the fucking river!”

“Darcy?”

“What?”

“I’m trying to listen for the others, so could you please not shout?”

“Sorry.”

…

…

…

“Just promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“The next time anyone suggests something as harebrained as an Avengers Couples’ retreat, slap your hand over my mouth, carry me out of the room, distract me with food or something shiny, I don’t care! Just do _whatever_ is necessary to keep me from saying ‘Yes’!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope this was a nice breather after last chapter’s sadness.
> 
> Next up: Bruises. It’s not going to be very happy, either.


	10. Bruises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here’s another depressing one. Why are all my funny chapters so short, and my sad ones so long?
> 
> Chapters 11-13 are all still in-progress, but I’m really hoping to complete Ch 11 by the end of today, at least.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

Bruises were a normal thing in Bucky’s life.

As a young child, he’d been overly adventurous and curious, leading to a lot of minor injuries as he climbed trees and tumbled down hills. He learned quickly from his misadventures, just as he got old enough to help his parents deal with his little sisters getting into the exact same kind of trouble.

When he met Steve, it was when Billy was chasing Madison around the playground at school, pulling her pigtails and eventually stealing her hair ribbons, forcing her to chase _him_ around instead. Billy nearly tripped over the tiny blonde waif of a boy who suddenly appeared in his path.

“Give those back.”

Billy just laughed at the little shrimp who tried to tell him what to do, so Steve launched himself at the bully, trying to grab the ribbons out of his fist. Then Billy got mad. He threw the little guy right off of him and onto the ground, then started kicking him. Many of Billy’s other friends joined in, too.

That was when Bucky decided he’d had enough. He charged in.

After the teachers finally decided to break it up, all the boys were sent home with bruises all over their faces and bodies (Billy and some of his friends were crying, but both Bucky and Steve took pride in the fact that they never shed a single tear).

As their friendship grew, it became completely normal for Bucky to find his best friend in the middle of a fight with one or more bullies – frequently Billy – and for Bucky to have to jump in and either beat the bastards down or drag Steve away if they were too badly outnumbered.

His mother was resistant to the idea, but he eventually wore her and his father down enough to convince them to allow him to sign up for boxing lessons. Ma was worried that it would just make him more inclined to get into more fights. Dad was of the mindset that it would give him a better chance of walking away from the inevitable fights with less injuries.

Dad was right. The number of brawls in the street and the schoolyard that he got involved in didn’t drop, but he came home from those and the fights in the ring with less bruises each time, save for the ones on his knuckles as he learned to hit harder and faster. After finishing school, and moving in with Steve, he even got into fighting for extra money down at the Y. It helped him put that much more food on their table and helped keep the roof over their heads, so any bruises he got from that were worth it.

Boxing wasn’t the only way he brought in money, though. Most places at the docks were always looking for labourers, so Bucky could usually get a job hauling and lifting boxes, loading and unloading cargo. Bruises and other minor injuries were common when moving large, heavy objects around, but he was lucky in that those were the worst that he got. He saw one guy break both legs when a crate came loose and landed on him. With the state the economy was in at the time, an injury like that was practically guaranteed to keep him from finding work and put him and his family on the streets.

When America joined the war overseas, and Bucky got drafted into the Army, he spent the first few weeks in basic feeling like one giant bruise. This was harder than anything he’d ever done, and even if he’d been the type to quit, it wasn’t like that was even an option. So he kept his mouth shut, ignored the whining from the guys from the ‘higher-class’ families who weren’t as used to the amount of physical labour that he was, and kept pushing. He must have made a good impression by doing that, because he soon saw himself getting promoted above those wimps.

On the front lines, bruises were more likely to come from throwing himself down to the ground to avoid gunfire instead of getting punched. Over there, Bucky’s opponents weren’t trying to strike him from up close, but shooting at him from afar.

When his division was captured by the Germans, he was certain that he would die there. He obviously wasn’t certain where they were _exactly_ , but he knew it was far enough behind enemy lines that there wouldn’t be a rescue coming anytime soon. They were put to work, building _some_ sort of outlandish weapons, along with what he thought might be a large airplane, but he couldn’t be sure. The Nazis guarding the facility and overseeing their work were more than happy to smack a soldier with their batons for working too slowly, for speaking out of turn, or just for shits and giggles, really. And occasionally fistfights would break out during mealtimes as men fought each other for more food. Bucky once found himself being attacked for the small amount of bread he’d been given, although he’d fought the other man off easily.

That man collapsed from exhaustion two days later, and was dragged off to the labs upstairs, never to leave alive. He still had the black eye Bucky had given him.

After a new-and-improved Steve had rescued Bucky from that hellhole and convinced him to recruit and join his own merry band of misfit fighters, the bruises, oddly, occurred less frequently, and vanished at a faster rate than before. The one he’d gotten on his knuckles after punching the punk in the nose for voluntarily playing human guinea pig healed remarkably quickly – not nearly as quickly as the nose in question, but still more quickly than normal. As in, by the time he woke up the morning after returning to the American camp.

He really should have said something, but he’d heard about the choice Steve had been forced to make after the death of Abraham Erskine (lab rat or dancing monkey, as Peggy Carter had apparently put it), and though no one else seemed to realise it, Bucky found himself faced with a similar one. The doctors who’d examined him upon his rescue had been unable to figure out what the scientist, Dr. Arnim Zola, had done to him, and since they couldn’t find any solid reason to keep him under observation, they’d cleared him to go back onto the battlefield. But if he told anyone about those changes, he would find himself back in a laboratory, which, after spending that short but hellish amount of time in Zola’s, was the stuff of nightmares for him.

The first time he woke after falling to his apparent death in the Swiss Alps, he could see that his whole body was a mess of dark bruises, although the far more horrifying sight of the stump that was now his left arm soon distracted him from that.

The Asset barely even noticed bruises, on the rare occasion that it got them, whether in training or on an assignment. They did not pose the same risk as gunshot or stab wounds, and any pain they might generate was inconsequential.

After he escaped HYDRA, after he started remembering, and after he agreed to go back with Steve and move into Stark Tower (he once knew someone with that name, didn’t he?), Bucky frequently took his rage and confusion and frustration and grief and… _everything_ out on the special reinforced punching bags in the Tower’s gym. He would spend hours down there, pummelling the bags until he was finally limp from exhaustion. Often, he would unwrap his right hand and see knuckles that were barely reddened from the impact. The sight made him feel like even more of a freak, and only served to fuel his anger even more.

Bruises were a normal thing in Bucky’s life. Their sudden absence was just another reason why he would never be the same Bucky anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am absolutely convinced that, once Bucky got the _full_ story of how Steve became Captain America, he punched him. In the nose. In front of all the other prisoners.
> 
> And I figured that, if Bucky got a dose of Super Serum that early, there may have been some signs that _something_ was different about him. But not wanting to become a lab rat again (irony) would have been a good motive for him to keep his mouth shut about it.
> 
> Next: Hypothermia


	11. Hypothermia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand more depressing stuff, but sandwiched in between a little bit of fluff. Chapters 12 and 13 are definitely full of feels, too, and though I haven’t started 14, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be the same due to the prompt (‘torture’, for which I have _so_ much material to work with).
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

It wasn’t something he was comfortable with saying aloud, but it was a known fact that Bucky Barnes _hated_ being cold, mainly because he was pretty much _always_ cold, and making it worse was _not_ good for his mental state. Memories of being put in and out of cryo-freeze set him on edge, and made him more vulnerable to a panic attack or a violent outburst. Or both.

Once Steve realised that, it was only a matter of time before their shared apartment was inundated with blankets of every description and the thermostat jacked up several degrees warmer than the rest of the Avengers Compound.

And since Christmas was coming up, Pepper decided to treat everyone with ‘12 Days of Christmas Sweaters’, gifting him with the softest, warmest sweaters he’d ever _touched_ , let alone owned, without singling him out.

Darcy did something similar, presenting them all with hand-knitted scarves, mittens, and hats, each one coloured and patterned to match their Avenger alter-egos (Jane’s and Pepper’s matched Thor’s and Tony’s, respectively). And while Bucky wasn’t an official Avenger, yet, he still got a set that seemed to be patterned after both his Winter Soldier gear and his blue Howling Commandos uniform, blending both parts of his past into something new (which did later inspire a few ideas about a new uniform). After Clint and Laura sent a photo of the entire Barton clan in their own Christmas sweaters and matching woolen purple accessories, the whole team took a group photo in their own – some more enthusiastic about it than others – and Darcy put it on the Avengers’ official social media pages.

(Scott, who was spending Christmas in San Francisco, sent a similar picture not long after.)

* * *

The massive blizzard a month later caught them all by surprise. Bucky and Darcy hadn’t actually been on base at the time. Darcy, in an attempt to maintain some semblance of normalcy in her life on the compound, had signed up to be on the rotating roster of personnel assigned to do grocery runs. And today it was her turn, and Bucky had volunteered to help her. It was the first time he’d left the facility since they’d finally gotten the charges against him dropped, which meant that this was the first time he could leave without fear of being arrested. He still opted to go low-profile, with a ball cap, a hooded sweatshirt (sunglasses looked way too out of place this time of year), and the skin-tone cover that had been created to hide his metal arm. After all, HYDRA was still very much a threat, and the sight of any one of the Avengers –including himself – out in public was still liable to cause a miniature riot.

His disguise was good enough that no one gave him a second glance as he followed Darcy around the supermarket, pulling items off the high shelf (“Why is it that more than half the stuff we need is always on the top shelf and out of my reach?” Darcy groused, “I swear, either the store staff or the people who put together this damn list are doing it on purpose!”) and helping carry the heavier ones. Even though grocery runs were done every other day, they had a _lot_ of people to feed, so they approached the checkouts with two overflowing shopping carts. It was something that should have attracted attention, but no one seemed to be bothered.

Well, the cashier checking them out seemed to have noticed, along with most of the other staff members. Bucky supposed it didn’t take a lot of intelligence to put two and two together when someone came through every other day with an obscene amount of groceries and a Stark Industries credit card. This particular cashier knew Darcy by name, and his eyes widened the first time he got a look at Bucky’s face. To his credit, though, he only smiled and nodded in acknowledgement, and thanked Bucky for his service as he handed over the (very long) receipt.

The snow was already coming down pretty hard when they exited the store and loaded all the food into the non-descript black van. They considered finding someplace to spend the night, but figured they would have enough time to get back to the compound before it _really_ got bad.

They were wrong. About halfway back, they got stuck in the snow for a third time, and this time Bucky wasn’t able to push the van free. Darcy managed to call Steve on her StarkPhone, but he told her that, since Tony, Rhodey, and Thor (the most likely to be able to reach them in this mess) were in Malibu, DC, and Asgard, respectively, they’d have to wait it out until someone came to pick them up. Well, actually, Steve told them to wait for the Quinjet to pick them up, only for Natasha to interrupt and tell him that the Quinjets weren’t equipped for flying in a storm of that magnitude.

So there they were, stuck in a van stuffed with food, sitting in the middle of the road in a huge snowstorm. “At least we aren’t likely to starve,” Darcy joked weakly as she tugged her blanket out of the emergency kit.

To keep the interior of the van warm, they would repeatedly re-start the engine, shutting it down when it got to a semi-comfortable temperature, in an effort to save fuel (the perishable food they’d bought were probably doomed, but it was them or Bucky and Darcy). Occasionally, Bucky had to get out and clear snow off the tailpipe, otherwise the carbon monoxide fumes would get backed up and fill the vehicle and kill them.

The third time he got back in, his lips were tinged with blue, and his whole body was visibly shaking. The engine was still off, and he fumbled with the key before finally getting a grip on it and twisting it, starting the car again. Darcy was getting really concerned, now. “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked softly, “I could go out next time.”

It took her a second to realise that he was shaking his head ‘no’, since it wasn’t much different from the shaking that was already happening. “Don’t want you going out in that.”

“Says the guy who’s just a few degrees away from getting frozen solid – again!” Feeling bold, she reached across his body and grabbed his right hand where it was gripping his left upper arm (could she say ‘left bicep’ when he technically didn’t have that muscle anymore?). “Can you even feel me doing this?!”

“…Yes?”

“You’re lying. Let me do the next one, at least.”

He didn’t exactly agree, but when the time came to climb out and wipe snow off the tailpipe, she jumped out before he could get a firm grip on the door handle on his side. Darcy was shaking like a leaf when she got back in, but she shot him a grin and a thumbs-up when he glared at her. He fumbled for the key, and this time his fingers were actually able to get a grip on the key much more quickly. But when he turned it all the way, the starter only sputtered, and there was no satisfying roar of the engine afterwards.

Two sets of eyes met, widened in fear.

“Shit.”

Less than half an hour later, any trace of heat from the engine had long since dissipated, and both Darcy and Bucky were shivering like mad in their seats. “D-d-doll?” Bucky asked, “Y-you still wi-with me?”

“Hmm?”

“Darcy!”

“M’awake!” Darcy jerked in her seat, blinking rapidly. “I’m awake!”

Bucky blinked, trying to stay awake, himself. “We’ve got t-t-t-to fin- to find a way to stay war-warm, somehow,” he growled, “Th-thi- th-this isn’t w-w-w-wo-working.”

“No sh-sh-shit.”

He fumbled with the zipper of his coat with his right hand, before switching to and having much better luck with his metal hand, which didn’t seem to be as affected by the cold as the rest of him. “G-get over here.”

“What?”

He got the jacket open and beckoned her over. “We’ll last l-longer if we-” He swallowed. “If we h-hud-huddle together. Sh-sharing body heat, a-a-and all that.”

In other circumstances, Darcy would have balked at the idea. However, there were two circumstances that squashed down any desire to do so. The first was that she was fucking freezing. The second was that she was being offered life-saving snuggles by Bucky Freakin’ Barnes, the Howling Commando she’d been crushing on since middle school.

So she scooted closer to him, letting him slip his arm and his blanket over her shoulders and pull her as close as he could with the seat divider in between them. After a few minutes, however, she growled and shook her head. “This isn’t enough,” she said, “Lift the steering wheel.”

“What?”

“Just do it.”

As he re-adjusted the wheel, she awkwardly climbed over the divider and settled in his lap, just barely fitting her legs in there. Then she wrapped both arms around his torso, bringing her blanket along with her. After several long seconds of hesitation, he did the same, completely cocooning them in his blanket.

* * *

Bucky woke up in the Avengers’ Infirmary roughly twenty-four hours later. Apparently, Steve had sent out a Quinjet to pick up him and Darcy as soon as the weather conditions were deemed safe enough. He and Barton had found him and Darcy both unconscious, clinging to each other in the driver’s seat. Both had been suffering from severe hypothermia, and even upon waking, Bucky still found himself shaking from the cold.

Darcy took longer to wake up, but when she did, in the middle of the night, she shook and shivered until she finally gave up and climbed into his bed. “Can’t get warm,” she offered as an excuse, “Budge over.”

He smirked and did as he was told, pulling her close again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow’s chapter prompt: Electrocution. Given the characters, there were two obvious ways I could have gone with this prompt – try and guess which two (and which one I went with).


	12. Electrocution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I immediately knew, when I saw this prompt, that I was going to write about either Darcy’s taser or HYDRA’s sick and barbaric memory-erasing machine.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

It was one of everyone’s worst nightmares. Definitely Bucky and Steve’s. Darcy’s, too.

HYDRA had re-captured the Winter Soldier.

The bastards had taken advantage of the chaos of a fucking Doombot attack, surrounded him while he was preoccupied, and then trapped him in a next, hit him with a cattle prod, and drugged him into submission. Natasha had spotted him being loaded into a nondescript SUV before a Doombot blocked her from pursuing. By the time the robots had been taken care of, Bucky was gone.

Tony had FRIDAY working overtime, trying to track the vehicle, but the traffic cameras in the area had all been taken out by the attack, so there wasn’t much that the young AI could work with. Natasha and Clint had checked in with every single contact they had, looking for information. Tony tore through the files they already had, and most of the other Avengers joined him, adding extra sets of eyes on the massive amounts of data. Steve, joined by Sam and Thor, scoured the entire city on foot, feeling the need to do _something_ even though he had no idea where to start looking. Darcy did her best, but she was seven and a half months pregnant by that point, and eventually Jane gently coaxed her to bed.

(Unbeknownst to the others, Maria Hill contacted Phil Coulson and his new version of S.H.I.E.L.D., all but begging him to help. Coulson needed no begging to get him to help Captain America’s best friend, and set Skye on the problem, hacking every source of information she could think of.)

Eventually, one of Natasha’s contacts hit paydirt. Bucky was being held in a HYDRA facility somewhere in Texas. With that information, Skye was able to narrow it down to an exact address. (Clint gave Maria a suspicious look when she produced the information, but trusted her enough to leave it alone – for now.)

The full Avengers team – large enough that they didn’t always need to bring in the roster for every op – burst into the facility, guns blazing, thunder flashing, and arrows flying. It was easy to find the room Barnes was being kept in – they just followed the screaming.

The Hulk ripped the steel doors apart as if they were made of paper, revealing the horrifying sight. Barnes was strapped into a metal chair, an evil-looking device clamped onto his head and sending jolts of electricity through his brain. The scientists and agents watching him didn’t even look bothered until the Avengers entered the room.

On an ordinary mission against HYDRA, the Avengers would at least try to leave at least a few agents alive, for the sake of interrogating them, later. Today’s mission was not an ordinary one. This was about rescuing one of their own, and about sending a _very_ clear message about fucking with one of the Avengers: _Don’t_.

Captain America, usually the one to remind the others not to kill everyone, was on the warpath. He punched the scientist manning the controls in the face at full strength, while Iron Man quickly scanned said controls in order to shut the machine down without accidentally doing any additional damage.

They were lucky that Thor was the first one to actually approach Barnes and rip off all his restraints, because the former Asset reacted defensively, lashing out and trying to choke the demigod with his metal hand. Both he and the Captain had to restrain him before Scarlet Witch could telepathically put him to sleep.

Tears were streaming down her face as she slipped back out of his mind. “They didn’t erase everything,” she reported, “But I don’t know how much they got.”

-

When Bucky woke up, he all but flew into a panic, but was mainly stopped by a pounding migraine, an apparent side-effect of the memory eraser. That, and the fact that Steve was at his bedside, still in his dirty and bloodstained uniform. He remembered Steve, and that alone was a huge relief. He remembered most of the Avengers, too, although he struggled to recall some of their names. He didn’t remember being captured, or trying to strangle Thor. It was hit or miss with his experiences since moving into the Avengers Compound.

When they finally deemed it safe to bring Darcy into the room, however, it became painfully clear that something was missing.

“I… I know you, right?”

You could hear a pin drop in the infirmary. It would be unrealistic to say that no one expected this, but it was still a shock to hear.

Bucky swallowed hard. “It’s just… I don’t remember, but I know you. I _know_ I do.”

Well, that was something. Darcy sank into the nearest chair, not missing the fact that Bucky’s eyes darted to her pregnant stomach. “You _do_ know me,” she confirmed softly, “My name is Darcy.”

-

The next couple of weeks had their ups and downs. It took Bucky a full three days to remember that he and Darcy had been in a relationship, immediately followed by the realisation that the baby growing inside her was _his_.

 _That_ had been followed by a meltdown of epic proportions, mostly one of guilt (he was going to be a _father_ and could barely even _remember_ the mother of his child) and panic (how was he supposed to _act_ like a father when he was such a complete and utter _wreck_?). But once they’d gotten him calmed down, Bucky had thrown himself into the task of regaining all his lost memories with a new determination. Occasionally, this actually caused setbacks, as he sometimes pushed himself too far in his efforts, resulting in panic attacks and/or severe migraines.

Darcy, well, nobody would blame her if she just broke down in tears one day, since HYDRA had basically ripped away all of her lover’s memories of her, setting them back to square one just two months before their child was due to be born. But she didn’t, and things did seem to be getting better by the day between the two of them. Despite his setbacks, Bucky was remembering more and more the longer they spent together. He remembered the first time he saw her, their first real date, the day she’d told him she was pregnant, and the first time she’d told him she loved him.

Their daughter was born a whole month and a week earlier than expected, which was a terrifying experience for both parents, but aside from being on the small side, the little baby girl was as healthy as a preemie like her could be.

“Rebecca,” Bucky said suddenly, late into the day after his daughter’s birth. He was sitting in a chair next to Darcy’s bed, his eyes fixated on the baby in the bassinet between them. The tiny infant had a healthy grip on his left index finger, completely unbothered by the fact that it was made of metal.

“Huh?” Darcy asked.

“The day before they took me. I remember, now. We didn’t know if we were having a girl or a boy, but we talking about names. You agreed to come up with a boy’s name, and I would come up with one for a girl. I sat down with a book of names, and literally _minutes_ before I got the call to Assemble, I decided on Rebecca. It was my baby sister’s name.”

Darcy smiled. “It’s a beautiful name. Rebecca Jane Lewis.” (They’d already decided to give the baby either ‘Steven’ or ‘Jane’ as a middle name, and to use Darcy’s surname as an extra layer of protection against the many people and organisations who would target Bucky through his child if they ever found out that he had one).

Rebecca let out a tiny yawn, stuck her daddy’s finger in her mouth, and continued sleeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah, some depressing stuff there, but I hope you liked the sappy, fluffy ending!
> 
> Next week: “Stay.”


	13. "Stay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is up later in the day than usual. I had all but the last 6 paragraphs ready for days, but either didn’t have time to finish or got stuck on the end.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

Today was a Really Very Bad Day.

That was the term that Darcy had coined to describe a day where he went through at least three different symptoms of a Bad Day (just two was simply a Very Bad Day). There were Bad Days where he had a panic attack. There were Bad Days where he got so anxious he couldn’t even speak. There were Bad Days where he was so on edge that he blanked out and slipped into Winter Soldier Attack Mode when someone startled him. There were other types of Bad Days, but today featured a combination of those particular three.

It had started with an interview. After all the charges against Bucky for his actions while he was under HYDRA’s control were dropped, the news media and all forms of social media were buzzing about him with a new vigour, and everyone seemed to have an opinion. Some were wholly sympathetic towards his situation, some were calling for his blood regardless, and some still had no idea what to think of it all. Pepper had broached the idea of having Bucky give an interview, in an attempt to gain some control of his public image.

A crowded press conference was, for obvious reasons, completely out of the question, so once Bucky agreed, Pepper arranged for a meeting with a pair of reporters from a reputable media company (Christine Everhart had actually had the _gall_ to personally request an interview, despite being on the Avengers Initiative’s blacklist, but had been shut down _very_ quickly), with both her and Steve in attendance so as to keep him from feeling outnumbered. The interview itself took place in a private conference room in Avengers Tower, also to help him feel safe. The reporters in question were respectful, not being overly nasty or accusatory, but they also weren’t afraid to ask the hard questions, and while Bucky did answer those questions to the best of his ability, he still walked out of the room with his right hand shaking and his left arm whirring in anticipation of a fight (a common response when he was angry or scared), and fighting the urge to throw up.

He didn’t speak all through lunch, and when Natasha asked him a direct question that didn’t have a Yes or No answer, he answered in ASL instead of speaking aloud. Clint had quickly offered to teach him and the rest of the Tower’s residents when that particular type of Bad Day became known, so that became his primary form of communication when the very thought of speaking left him terrified.

Darcy was more than happy to fill the quiet, though. She liked to share funny stories with everyone, from her escapades in New Mexico and London to her life pre-Jane, which was mainly tales of keggers and funny and/or annoying customers from when she worked in fast food to put a dent in her student loans (“I got _all_ the weirdos at the drive-thru. If they weren’t saying ‘I’d like to bend you over the counter, Baby’, they were all ‘Hi, I’m on a skateboard, can I have a burger combo?’ ‘No, dork!’”).

After lunch, he went down to the gym to pummel out his frustrations on a punching bag. It was his usual go-to when he was stressed, a way to release all that pent-up anxiety and anger without running the risk of slipping up and accidentally hurting someone.

Usually.

The reporters had asked a bit about what HYDRA had done to him, how they had turned him into the Winter Soldier. It had been asked with good intentions, as a way to promote sympathy for his situation, but it had brought up lots of bad memories. Memories of waking up on a lab table with a metal arm, of convulsing in a chair while electricity coursed through his head, of scores of beatings for the smallest mistake or rebellion, and of so much more.

He got so lost in his head that even though Steve called his name before approaching him, he didn’t notice his best friend’s presence until he tapped his shoulder to get his attention.

The silver metal fist just barely grazed past Steve’s nose, but the flesh and bone one was right on-target, slamming into the Captain’s left cheekbone and fracturing it. He landed several more hits, as Steve reeled from the sudden blow, before Thor managed to pull him off and pin him to the floor.

It took him a full minute to snap out of attack mode, thrashing wildly under the Thunder God’s strong grip and trying to reach one of the knives he always carried on his person. Once he was back to himself, and Thor had released him, he took one look at Steve’s face and immediately started panicking again, brokenly sobbing “I’m sorry” over and over again, in between gasps as he struggled and failed to control his breathing.

Steve, ignoring the pain of his new injuries, dragged himself over to his best friend and sat down, before gently lifting Bucky up and setting him back down so that his head was in Steve’s lap. “It’s okay,” he assured him, “It wasn’t your fault.”

He kept repeating that sentiment over and over, until Bucky’s sobs had quieted to whimpers and his breathing had steadily returned to something resembling normal. By then, Sam and Natasha had arrived, and Sam was quick to drag Steve off to the infirmary.

Natasha helped Thor pull Bucky to his feet. The former Winter Soldier had gone silent once more, meekly obeying as they gently led him to the elevator and took him up to his and Steve’s apartment.

Darcy and Jane also shared an apartment on that same floor, and the spunky lab assistant had just been exiting it when the trio exited the elevator. She took one look at Bucky’s distressed state (glassy, red-rimmed eyes, pale, tear-streaked cheeks, blank expression, hunched shoulders, and a spatter of Steve’s blood on his shirt) and followed them in. Without a word, she pulled his bedcovers to the side and fluffed the pillow as he silently crawled into it. Natasha quietly filled her in on what as she and Thor each removed a boot and Darcy helped him pull off the bloodstained shirt. They all knew from experience that those panic attacks left Bucky exhausted afterwards.

Darcy tucked him in gently, reminding him a little of how his Ma used to do so when he was little. The fear and guilt and ‘What if’s were still swirling around his head, making him feel like he was going to be sick, but they were all slowly being overwhelmed by the bone-deep tiredness that was slowly pulling him down.

Darcy, Natasha, and Thor all turned to leave the room and give him space, but stopped when his metal hand slipped out from under the blankets and gently gripped Darcy’s wrist.

“Stay,” he whispered, sounding like he might break if she walked away from him.

Darcy nodded to an unsure Natasha and Thor, then sat down on the edge of the bed, toed off her sneakers, and then settled in behind to him on top of the covers. Not once did she try to remove his hand.

The other two closed the bedroom door behind them, although Darcy was sure that either one or both of them would stay in the apartment proper until Steve returned.

She got herself comfortable, grabbing a spare blanket and dragging it over herself. Then she started running her fingers through Bucky’s hair, slowly but rhythmically, even after his breathing finally evened out and he drifted off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was watching an episode of ‘CSI’ (the original) that Kat Dennings was in while working on this four days ago, and the skateboarder in the drive-thru blurb was quoted directly from one of her lines. The ‘bending over the counter’ bit was something another character actually said to hers.
> 
> Next chapter’s prompt is ‘Torture’, and since I haven’t even started it, it might also be coming later in the day. I’m not sure what I’m going to do for 15, but I at least have a good idea for 16, and 17 is already completely written.


	14. Torture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now for the Harry Potter crossover nobody asked for!
> 
> I really did _not_ expect it to grow into the monster it is now. It’s almost twice as long as the longest chapter prior to this. That’s why it took so long to post.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

“Crucio!”

The metal-armed muggle on the floor visibly reacted to the curse. His body jerked, and every muscle clenched up. But not bloody once did he scream!

Sylvanus Rookwood (son of Augustus Rookwood and wand for hire) gritted his teeth and cast the spell again. “Crucio! Crucio, Crucio, Crucio, damn it!”

None of this was going to plan at all! It was supposed to be simple: travel to bloody America, fetch the Parkinson squib, and bring her back so her father could marry her off! With his elder daughter unable to conceive, the Parkinson family needed a pureblooded heir, or the family would die out, not just in name, but in blood. That was where the younger girl, the Squib who’d been sent away, came in. Unfortunately, the little bitch was proving difficult to obtain. Squib or not, she had a duty to her family, but she had refused, and had gone and hidden behind some muggles who had proven to be a surprisingly challenging obstacle. Hence why they had hired Sylvanus to retrieve her, healthy and unharmed, without getting caught, as there were a few pesky international laws that would get in the way.

He’d spotted Dahlia Parkinson – now going by the alias of Darcy Lewis – in the company of those same muggles in New York City, right where his tracking spell said she’d be. It had been a complex spell to cast, making sure that the spell would transfer from the latest letter (demanding her return to Britain) to her when she touched it, but now he was able to track the little whore no matter where she went. The spell had been sorely needed, because Dahlia and the three muggles had quickly finished eating their disgusting muggle meals at the outdoor café and got up and left not even a minute after his arrival, and then disappeared into the mass of people. (The sheer number of bodies in this city was mind-boggling, especially since most of them had to be muggles).

He followed his tracking spell to a side-alley, where he suddenly found himself under attack!

One of the muggles Dahlia had been cavorting with, a tall man with unkempt, dark hair, grabbed Sylvanus by the throat just as he rounded the corner and slammed him against the wall. Sylvanus raised his wand, only for the hoodlum to grab his right wrist and pin it to the same wall. Bizarrely, the hand he used to do so appeared to be made of _metal_.

“Who do you work for?!” the thug growled, “Why are you following us?”

Sylvanus felt no need to answer this mad, brutish muggle’s questions. He spotted Dahlia crouching behind the muggle, partially hidden from view by a pair of overflowing rubbish bins. Inwardly, he sneered. How desperate Lord Parkinson must be to resort to marrying off a Squib who hid among literal trash in order to save his family line?

Her eyes met his, and then quickly fixated on his wand. Then her expression morphed from one of fear to anger. “Un-fucking-believable!” She stood up, already halfway across the alley by the time the last vulgar syllable left her lips. “How many times does Dederick need me to say ‘No’ before he finally figures out where to shove that betrothal?!”

“Darcy, stay back!” the muggle ordered, “We don’t know what he’s here for.”

“If I had to guess, he’s on orders from my douchebag of a sperm donor who wants me to shack up with his buddy’s troll of a son.” She looked Sylvanus right in the eye, though she stayed well behind her muggle attack dog. “Tell Dederick that I’m not crawling back to him now that he suddenly needs me. _He_ kicked _me_ out of his family, and I owe him _nothing_ , much less a marriage to Marcus Flint! The Parkinson line can die out with him and Pansy, as far as I’m concerned!”

Sylvanus was enraged. “How _dare_ you! How dare a little Squib _girl_ such as yourself defy her father and Lord? You’ll come with me, whether you want to or not, and he’ll be sure to put you in your- ack!”

He was cut off mid-threat, as his attacker suddenly lifted him up off his feet, dragging his back along the rough brickwork. “ _No one’s_ takin’ her anywhere she doesn’t want to go.” Sylvanus couldn’t help the thrill of fear that shot up his spine when he finally looked the muggle in the eye. He’d seen wild animals with less predatory gazes, and he felt with absolute certainty that this muggle would not hesitate to murder him given the slightest reason. And that by threatening Dahlia, Sylvanus had brought himself perilously close to giving him such a reason.

“FREEZE!”

The attention of all three in the alley was suddenly drawn to a fourth person. A man, to be specific, wearing a uniform that identified him as a muggle law enforcement officer, and aiming a gun at the brute who held Sylvanus captive.

“Put the man down,” the new arrival ordered sternly, “and put your hands above your head – both of you!”

Dahlia put her hands up, but her companion did not. “He was following us, officer!” she protested, “He was here to kidnap me!”

The officer did not lower his weapon. “We’ll sort this all out down at the station. Now, put the man down. I’m not going to ask a third time.”

But Sylvanus was not going to wait and let himself be rescued from a muggle by another muggle, (especially not since the former gave no indication of being intimidated by the latter). His pride would simply not allow it. Thinking quickly, he cast a wordless Lumos Maxima (as the muggle’s hand was still wrapped around his throat), shutting his eyes to avoid being blinded like the rest of them.

The muggle let go to shield his eyes, and Sylvanus dropped back down, hitting him with a spell that launched him into the opposite wall of the alley – just missing the rubbish bins, which would have been fitting. Then he sent a stunner at the law officer, taking his primitive but still dangerous weapon out of play, before finally turning his attention to his true target.

Dahlia surprised him, swinging and punching him in the face. He stumbled back a few steps before casting a full body-bind at her. She fell facedown on the filthy ground, a small, black, rectangular object clattering next to her. Sylvanus ignored the device, not understanding the significance of the words on its glassy surface (‘PANIC FUNCTION ACTIVATED’).

He grabbed the girl and flipped her over onto her back. Even with her entire body paralysed and her jaw clenched shut, she still managed to give him a look full of anger and defiance. “Personally, I don’t think you or all this trouble are worth what you’re father’s paying me. So before I hand you over to him, I’ll just have to find some way for you to make it up to me.” Despite being a Squib, she was a very beautiful girl, and Sylvanus let his eyes wander over her form.

“DARCY!” Sylvanus barely had enough time to dive to the side as the first muggle came barrelling at him, hardly looking fazed at being thrown at a brick wall at speed. He came at Sylvanus with a knife, which the wizard quickly removed with a Disarming Charm. To his surprise, the blade was quickly replaced by another, as if it had been summoned into his hand from nowhere. Sylvanus was forced to dodge a second time, though he was unable to completely escape; the muggle just managed to nick his upper arm and draw blood.

When the muggle somehow produced a third knife after being disarmed of the second one, Sylvanus realised that he was better off cutting and running, taking his target with him, of course. An Impediment Jinx stopped the muggle in his tracks, giving him enough time to run back over to Dahlia.

He was going to grab her arm and Apparate away with her, when the sudden _BOOM_ of thunder startled him. It was a bright, blue, sunny day, so the abrupt gathering of storm clouds from out of nowhere and the flash and boom of lightning and thunder directly behind him made him practically jump out of his skin and whip around to face the new threat.

To make things evens stranger, a new man descended from the sky – without the aid of a broom, mind you – and landed in front of Sylvanus, scowling and brandishing a large stone hammer. It took Sylvanus a moment to recognise him as one of the other muggles Dahlia had been dining with, but clearly this was no ordinary muggle, even more so than the first.

The large blonde man hefted his hammer. “Release my friends, sorcerer!”

But Sylvanus had no intention of leaving without his quarry. He reached back blindly and grabbed a fabric-covered wrist and Apparated away as the first man yelled from close by – closer than Sylvanus initially realised.

When Sylvanus re-appeared in the rented house he’d procured for his time in America, he realised right away something was wrong. For one, the arm he’d grabbed hold of was clearly moving and not under a body-bind curse. For another, the cry of surprise that accompanied their arrival was far too masculine-sounding to be coming from Dahlia.

Sylvanus dodged the third knife, summoning a chair – to which he’d been intending to tie Dahlia – in between himself and the interfering muggle. Then, with a cry of “Accio knife!” he promptly had to dive for cover as no fewer than six knives flew at him from somewhere on the other man’s person.

That was it! He was enraged at the amount of trouble a mere Squib and her muggle friends could give him, and he channelled that rage into his next spell: “Crucio!”

A full twenty minutes later, he was about to take the risk of using a different Unforgivable curse. Despite his repeated application of the Cruciatus Curse, his unwanted captive was refusing to scream in pain, let alone give him information regarding Dahlia’s place of residence and the unusual capabilities of anyone else who might get in between him and her.

The muggle, now firmly bound to the chair, smirked at him at one point. “There are more ways to inflict pain on someone,” he said, “And I’ve been on the receiving end of torture from people who are _far_ more creative than you. Well…” And there was that predatory look again. “Some of them _were_ more creative than you. I’ve already killed some of those poor bastards.”

Sylvanus, his anger building at this mere muggle’s defiance, raised his wand again. He would _force_ the muggle to infiltrate Dahlia’s home and bring her to him (assuming the Imperius Curse was more effective on him than the Cruciatus Curse).

A swirl of sparks appearing in the corner of his eye stayed his hand, however, and had him whipping his wand around to face the new threat.

The orange sparks formed a ring hovering above the ground and facing him. Sylvanus didn’t hesitate this time, firing a Stunner at the human-shaped silhouette coming through it.

To his shock, the red jet of light bounced off another, smaller circle of orange light that appeared suddenly. He had to duck to avoid getting knocked out by his own spell!

Another man stepped through the portal, his hands surrounded by the orange light. He wore a red cape that seemed to float in the air behind him and had a trimmed goatee, and though he wielded no wand, he clearly had some form of magical power.

Exactly what kind of people had the _Squib_ actually managed to fall in with?!

“Bucky!”

Dahlia Parkinson slipped out from behind the man and ran over to Sylvanus’s captive. Sylvanus received yet another shock when the muggle, ‘Bucky’, discarded the ropes with which Sylvanus had bound him. He opened his arms and allowed Dahlia to jump into them, and held her tight, not taking his furious eyes off of Sylvanus, even as his limbs shook from the strain of having endured numerous Cruciatus Curses. “I’m okay, Doll,” he assured her.

Sylvanus had reached the end of his rope. “What the bloody hell is going on here?!” he raged, wand still in hand even if he had no idea what the consequences of casting would be, “What are you people?!”

Dahlia finally turned to glare at him. “If you stuck-up purebloods would just bother to get your heads out of your asses and stick your noses outside the magical world every once in a while, you’d know who the Avengers were. And _please_ tell me you’ve _at least_ heard of the Sorcerer Supreme!” She gestured at the goateed man, who looked rather irritated.

“I _told_ you to wait until I brought him back,” the so-called ‘Sorcerer Supreme’ scolded her.

Dahlia shrugged nonchalantly, also not looking away from Sylvanus. “So, what should we do with him, Strange? Call M.A.C.U.S.A. and have their Aurors pick him up?”

Sylvanus paled. The American Ministry was known for being much harsher in its punishment, and he knew that his British citizenship would be of no help to him. Being the son of a confirmed Death Eater, the Ministry would certainly not cause an international incident over _him_.

Strange scowled. “I am _not_ dealing with those pretentious wand-wavers, Miss Lewis.”

“I didn’t say you had to deal with them! Just dump him through a Sling Ring with a note attached, or something!”

“They’ll probably try to erase the Sergeant’s memories of the incident.”

“Let them try,” Bucky growled.

Sylvanus sneered. “You lot don’t know what you’re playing at,” he snarled, “You filthy muggles and Squibs can’t do this to me! I am Sylvanus Rookwood, a proud pureblood, and I-”

“Oh, were you a Death Muncher like Augustus Rookwood?” Darcy snarled back, “That’s certainly something M.A.C.U.S.A. will want to know! I heard they’ve got something even worse than the Dementor’s Kiss for scum like _you_.”

Sylvanus, incensed at her tone, swung his wand around to cast a spell at her, only for a silvery metal fist to slam into his nose.

* * *

Bucky glared down at the piece of crap on the floor at his feet. His hands – both of them – shook uncontrollably, an apparent side-effect from the pain spell that had been cast on him more than a dozen times, and he ached down to the very core of his bones, but he stayed standing from sheer will alone (and perhaps a little bit of leaning on both Darcy and the back of the chair).

“You know, this is the first time in a long time that I’ve wanted to kill someone who wasn’t HYDRA,” he told the other two faux casually.

Darcy tightened her hold around his torso. “That bastard isn’t worth it,” she told him, “His wand alone will probably be enough proof that he’s committed crimes. Can you remember any of the incantations he used?”

Bucky swallowed, giving in to the need to sit back down. Darcy still didn’t let go of him. “Mostly just one. The one that hurt a lot. He kept saying ‘Crucio’, whatever that one means.”

Darcy paled. Then she stepped away from Bucky and kicked Rookwood in the ribs. _Hard_. “Fucking son of a bilgesnipe!” she spat, “How many times did he cast that on you?!”

Bucky shrugged. “Fourteen.”

And then it was suddenly hard for him to breathe, because she was hugging him like she was trying to permanently fuse her arms to his body. “Just once would have been enough to throw him in prison for life! Are you okay? No, of course you’re not okay, fourteen Cruciatus Curses in one go is _not_ okay!”

He raised his trembling right hand to stroke the back of her head. “I’ll be okay,” he whispered, “This feels like crap, but HYDRA did worse to me than this. I’m just glad he grabbed me instead of you.”

He felt her lips press to his chest through his shirt. “Let’s just get him to the proper authorities before I do something _really_ rash. And then I’ll send an owl to Dederick, explaining to him just what will happen to anyone else he tries to send after me. The Parkinson family can kiss my ass.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may consider continuing this crossover AU, but this is all I have for now. I’ll try to keep it in mind when considering the rest of the Whumptober prompts, but no promises.
> 
> Next chapter’s prompt is ‘Manhandling’, and now I finally know what I want to do with it!


	15. Manhandling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here’s Chapter 15, which covers Darcy’s POV of Chapter 7 (‘Kidnapped’).
> 
> Thanks so much for your comments on last chapter, especially regarding continuing the Squib!Darcy concept. I have actually come up with a relatively detailed backstory for ‘Dahlia’ since posting, however, it remains just that: a backstory. I’m still not sure what to do about an actual _plot_. I have a few things to figure out, like what’s Doctor Strange’s relationship with the Wizarding World like? Same with the Asgardians and S.H.I.E.L.D. And how American magical society has changed since the 1920s (the Harry Potter Wiki says that Rappaport’s Law, which was the ‘you can’t even be friends with No-Maj’s’ law from ‘Fantastic Beasts’, was repealed in 1965, but how does that affect twenty-first century magical America?).
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

Darcy Lewis was pissed off. I repeat. Pissed. Off.

All she wanted to do was go and get a cup of coffee. Stark Tower only had Starbucks, and there was a cute little coffee shop that, in her opinion, far surpassed that of the chain store brand. What she did _not_ want was to be grabbed from behind and thrown into the back of a van. Or to have a gun shoved in her face. “Scream, and I’ll kill you,” the bulky man holding the gun threatened.

He slammed the van door shut, and went around to the driver’s seat, gun still in hand, before she could find her taser in her bag (typical – whenever she needed something _right now_ , it immediately retreated to the bottom of the bag). Then he tossed her a set of zip tie cuffs. “Put those on. Now.”

Darcy glared, but with a gun aimed at her face, she disgruntledly slipped her hands through the loops in the zip ties and tightened them around her wrists. Natasha had already taught her how to slip free of these, anyway.

“And give me your cell phone.”

She did so, scowling when he tossed it out the window and into a garbage can. She could only hope her friends rescued her baby before the garbage truck came.

“Now, keep quiet, and stay still. Try anything funny, and I’ll shoot you.”

Darcy glared at him again, but settled down. Her bag was still next to her, so when the goon turned to focus on the crazy New York traffic, she discreetly fished her taser out of the hidden pocket in her bag (as it was technically illegal to carry in New York) and slipped it into the custom-made thigh holster that Natasha had gotten her for her last birthday. She could theoretically zap him with it right now, but he was currently in control of the vehicle she was currently riding in, and who knew how many people could get hurt if they crashed? So instead, she slipped a bobby pin out of her hair and, pretending to curl up in a ball like a scared hostage, used it to pick at the zip tie mechanism and loosen her plastic restraints enough that she could slip them off with ease.

Eventually, the van pulled into somewhere dark, most likely a warehouse, given what she could see out the front window. Pretty sloppy, if she said so herself. She decided to nickname him Amateur Asshole in her head.

Amateur Asshole got out and came back around to the side door of the van, and climbed in with her before closing the door behind her. “Alright, now, here’s how it’s going to work. You are going to let me search you. Then you are going to tell me everything you know about our Asset. Then-”

“Fuck you.”

Asshole blinked. “What did you just say?!”

“I said, fuck you! Fuck you and all your fellow goose-stepping HYDRA morons! He is _not_ your Asset anymore, and if you think for a _second_ that I’ll betray him, you’ve got another-”

_SMACK!_

Darcy froze, a bit stunned by the sudden slap across the face. She slowly turned her head back so that she was facing the Asshole again, and then she spit in _his_ face.

It felt great, for all of a second and a half, because that was how much time passed in between her saliva hitting him (right in between the eyes – bullseye!) and him slamming her down onto the floor of the van. “Bitch!” he snarled, pressing the muzzle his gun into her chest, “I’m going to make you pay for that!”

He started running his free hand up and down her body, apparently checking her for weapons (seriously, Amateur Asshole, shouldn’t you have done that earlier?), but taking his sweet time in feeling up her curves and her chest. “Hey!” Darcy snapped, “Only one man gets to handle the girls, and you sure as fuck ain’t him!”

“Shut up,” Asshole growled, bringing his search down past her waist, but focusing on checking her ass, rather than between her thighs. He even ran his hand over the strap of her thigh holster, but showed no reaction. Sweet Frigga, did the Avengers already kill all of the intelligent HYDRA agents, and leave only the incompetent ones remaining?! Then he straightened up, apparently satisfied that she wasn’t carrying. “Alright, now, here’s my first question: which floor of Avengers Tower does the Asset live on?”

“Your mama’s floor,” Darcy spat, eyeing the gun pressed against her chest and noticing that the fucking _safety was off_ (Okay, fine, Hill, it _was_ a good idea to make her take a firearms course even though she hadn’t held a gun since).

Absolute Amateur Asshole pushed the gun harder against her ribs. “You’ve got one hell of a mouth, little girl. Maybe when we’re done here, I can see just how much-” He cut himself off with a squeak as Darcy took advantage of their position – her lying on the floor and him kneeling with his crotch pretty much directly above her knees – to hit him right where it hurt the most. At the same time, she grabbed the gun and, slipping one hand out of the zip ties, shoved it to the side before going for a punch in the face.

Absolute Amateur Asshole reeled back, giving Darcy enough room to sit up, pull out her taser, and nail him right in the chest with it. Asshole collapsed against the van’s door, twitching and jerking, while Darcy pushed herself to her feet, smirking. “You _really_ should have known better,” she told him casually, “I know for a fact that HYDRA has it on record that I fucking tased the God of Thunder. Why the hell did you think I was going to be anything resembling an easy mark?”

She never got her answer, and for two reasons. One: Asshole was still screaming and crying, even though her taser wasn’t even currently zapping him. And two: the van door was suddenly ripped away, and Asshole tumbled out and onto the ground.

Make that the floor of a warehouse, Darcy confirmed her initial guess, now that she could see more of the outside. And even better, standing right there was her heroically hot assassin fiancé, looking ready to bust some heads. Sadly, there were really no more heads for him to bust. Darcy would have to make that up to him later.

“Hi, babe,” she greeted him cheerfully, “HYDRA needs to train their goons better. Asshole focused more on copping a feel than actually searching me. Really, you’d think they’d know enough to take _your_ fiancée more seriously than your average lab monkey. And they only sent the one! I’m insulted, honestly.” Absolute Amateur Asshole on the floor groaned, and Darcy realised that in his new position, he could now see right up the horribly professional skirt she was wearing (the dress code in the Stark Tower labs was pretty relaxed, but all her jeans were in the wash). So she pulled the trigger of her trusty taser again. “And stop looking up my skirt!”

She looked back up at Bucky, and grinned at the look he was giving her. Oh, yeah, making it up to him was going to be _fun_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, for those who spotted it, Darcy sort of paraphrased one of Sean Connery’s lines from ‘The Last Crusade’. Okay, so technically it’s either two or three words, depending on how you count hyphenated words, and Darcy stuck an extra word in the middle, but it’s what she was thinking of when she said it. If you haven’t spotted it, give it a read.
> 
> Next up: Bedridden. A humour one, thankfully.


	16. Bedridden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein. Also, I don’t own American Ninja Warrior, or any of the ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians’ books or movies (aside from the fact that I have a copy of all the Riordanverse books except ‘The Dark Maze’ and both DVDs), or the play.

“You know, I was under the impression that, of the two of you, _you_ were the one with a shred of self-preservation instinct. I mean, really, you were there when Nat and Pepper gave Steve the whole ‘Parachutes Are Not For Wimps’ Speech. You _took over_ the ‘Parachutes Are Not For Wimps’ Speech! So, really, I’d honestly like to hear an explanation for _this_!”

Darcy gestured emphatically at the knee-to-toe cast currently encasing Bucky’s left leg.

Bucky groaned, looking _extremely_ miserable in his infirmary bed. “I jumped off a roof and misjudged the strength of a flagpole I was going to use to slow my fall. Damn thing snapped clean off, and I broke my leg landing on the sidewalk. You happy?”

“Hardly. But I’m going to enjoy the irony of _Steve_ giving _you_ a safety lecture, so ask me again once he’s finished.”

* * *

Darcy really was in somewhat better spirits after Steve’s lecture was over, even if Bucky argued with him every step of the way, calling him a hypocrite, and the pair of century-old super-soldiers temporarily reverted into a pair of squabbling kids (one poor medical intern walked into a doorframe staring at them as he passed by).

Bucky’s spirits, on the other hand, were brought down even lower when the doctor sentenced him to a full week of bed rest. He was only allowed to leave his bed for bathroom breaks, and even then, there had to be some level of supervision (Bucky drew the line at anyone actually being _in_ the bathroom with him). For someone as active and paranoid as him, seven days straight of being stuck in bed were going to be seven days in _hell_.

Darcy, who was assigned to supervise him and make sure he actually obey the doctor’s orders, was inclined to agree.

* * *

Day One wasn’t so bad. Darcy brought her laptop in with her and got Bucky caught up on all the TV shows they’d been following together. Well, most of them. There was no way she was going to torture a bedridden Winter Soldier with American Ninja Warrior. It wasn’t that he disliked the show, not at all! It was the fact that he couldn’t drag her down to the gym and show her how _he_ would have tackled the course that would have driven him insane.

She also showed him the first ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians’ film adaptation, about which he had some pretty strong opinions that mirrored hers pretty well. (“Wait, did they write out Clarisse?” “Why are the pearls suddenly Persephone’s thing?” “Didn’t the writers know the Hydra doesn’t show up until Book Two? What happened to Echidna?” “I thought the author went out of his way to _not_ make Hades evil!”). She didn’t even bother showing him the second film. (“Seriously, the first film has no cliffhanger but gets a sequel, yet the sequel ends on a cliffhanger and no third movie will ever be made. Which is probably a good thing, if the movies are just going to diverge even more from the source material.”)

Mostly, he slept, thanks to the painkillers the doctors had prescribed him.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner in bed was also a bonus. Darcy was an excellent cook.

* * *

Day Two also featured a lot of sleeping, then Darcy pulled up a full video of the Percy Jackson stage musical. (“A _much_ more faithful adaptation of ‘The Lightning Thief’, plus singing!”)

Multiple card games were played, of every variety – Solitaire, Go Fish, Crazy Eights, Poker, Gin, War, and a ridiculously one-sided card fight that involved Darcy ducking behind other pieces of furniture while Bucky winged cards at her head after he caught her cheating.

Yes, that’s right, it was one-sided in favour of the guy stuck on his ass in bed with a broken leg.

* * *

Day Three was a Friday, and Friday was Poker Night. Tony made the mistake of gloating about how having one less assassin at the table would give him a better chance at winning. So Natasha and Clint conspired to have Poker Night moved to Bucky’s room in his and Steve’s apartment for that week.

Tony found himself waiting in the common area for an hour straight before he finally gave up and asked J.A.R.V.I.S. where the hell everyone was. The look on his face when he walked into Bucky’s bedroom to find all the Avengers seated in chairs around the bed (which was covered by a piece of cardboard as a makeshift poker table) was hilarious. Everyone – except, of course, for the three assassins with their perfect poker faces – burst out laughing. Tony pouted for a bit, then grabbed a kitchen stool and joined the game.

* * *

Similarly to Day Three, Day Four – Saturday – had its own weekly event, namely Ladies’ Night. The plan was for Steve to take over ‘babysitting’ while Darcy went out, but apparently Doctor Fucking Doom had his own plans.

Steve had to bail (and so did Natasha, for that matter), and while Ladies’ Night otherwise went on as scheduled, Bucky got stuck with Tony’s intern, some teenager named Parker, keeping an eye on him. To his credit, Parker was quiet and more concerned with finishing his homework, although he also seemed to be more than a bit terrified of the irritated assassin.

Eventually, Bucky got bored and started tossing around a little red bouncy ball. Parker didn’t particularly enjoy the distracting noise it caused, but Bucky kept doing it, if only to see how long it would take the kid – if ever – to ask him to quit it.

The next time the ball got within arm’s reach of Parker, the intern snatched it out of the air _without even looking_ and went back to his physics homework without uttering a single word.

He _was_ just an intern, right?

* * *

By Day Five, Bucky Barnes was officially stir-crazy. He had read what felt like every damn book in the Tower, had caught up on every show he cared to watch, and frankly, he was just tired of watching movies. He hadn’t gone down to the gym since before his last mission, and now he had five days’ worth of restless energy built up and ready to explode.

Darcy wasn’t doing too well, either, for multiple reasons. The main one being that she was bearing the brunt of Bucky’s frustration, which in turn frustrated her. Plus, all the time she spent watching Bucky was time she wasn’t spending watching Jane. By the end of Day Three, she’d been fielding calls from the temporary lab assistant subbing for her, who was stressed to the point of tears over how Jane was refusing to eat because she was too busy doing Science! Darcy had needed to calm the poor guy down before coaching through the delicate art that was Jane-wrangling.

* * *

All that frustration came to a head on Day Six. Bucky was back at it with the rubber bouncy ball, only this time he threw it so hard, it left a crack in the wall. But it wasn’t even the damage he was doing to his own apartment that set Darcy off, because she was took busy trying to read, decipher, and transcribe some of Jane’s notes to look up. But after a full half-hour of being distracted by the constant thunks and smacks, she finally huffed, stood up, and marched over to him.

What followed was a shouting match that could be heard even through the soundproofed walls of the apartment. When Steve and Natasha finally intervened, Darcy was in tears, and Bucky was fighting them back himself.

The pair was immediately separated. Natasha met little resistance from Darcy as she herded the younger woman out of the apartment, texting Wanda and arranging an emergency retail therapy session (Pepper and Maria were otherwise occupied). Meanwhile, Steve just sat down and waited until Bucky calmed down enough to start taking about it.

As they were nearing the register at Store Number Three, Natasha’s cell phone pinged with a text message from Bucky:

_Put it on my card. I’ll apologize to her in person whenever she feels ready to talk to me again._

* * *

On Day Seven, there were more tears. But they were the good kind, the kind that come from lots apologies and explanations and – most importantly – forgiveness. The couple fell asleep just holding each other, feeling more comfortable with each other since the whole mess started.

* * *

The week of bed rest was finally up, although Bucky still had to hobble around on crutches. Any residual frustration was channelled far more productively, however, as he got to partially resume his responsibilities of training the new recruits, if only from the sidelines. Anyone who claimed that the un-brainwashed former Winter Soldier was no longer terrifying was dead wrong, because he was still able to make one overconfident rookie cry despite the fact that he was still visibly injured.

He didn’t see Darcy for a whole day, but that was due entirely to the fact that she was busy catching up on all her missed duties over the past week (her poor temporary replacement was probably going to need therapy after that week).

On his second day of freedom, Bucky arranged for a nice picnic lunch, just for the two of them, in a quiet spot on the grounds of the Avengers Compound. Both enjoyed the fresh air and the food, and both were smiling as Darcy helped him to his feet and insisted on carrying everything back inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky’s complaints about the ‘Percy Jackson’ films are just a _few_ of my own – I’m particularly annoyed about Hades’ portrayal. Nothing against the actor’s performance, but in the books, author Rick Riordan emphasises how Hades isn’t evil, he just got the short end of the stick and is bitter about it. The movie crumpled that up and cheaply portrays him as a power-hungry death god who wants to overthrow his brothers if given the opportunity. Riordan relies on the original texts and plays that gave us our understanding of Greek mythology, without necessarily following along with the tropes commonly featured in modern adaptations, but the film seemed to deliberately go in the ‘Hades = Greek Satan’ direction in spite of that. But [the stage musical](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bTWWgPbSsw)  
>  is pretty good, and more faithful to the books.
> 
> As you can see, I have Strong Feelings about this topic. I literally _wrote a college paper_ on how ‘Troy’ strips all the godly elements out of the Epic Cycle (it’s not just based on ‘The Iliad’, no matter what the back of the DVD says). It honestly was one of the easiest papers for me to write, simply because of my interest in the subject matter.
> 
> Coming Up Next: ‘Drugged’. I had _fun_ writing this one!


	17. Drugged

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For placement, this chapter takes place at least after the events of ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’, but it’s up to you whether the Infinity War has happened (and then been fixed) or not. ‘Civil War’ did not happen, though.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

“You _really_ have to stop being kidnapped.”

Darcy shook her head, only to stop when the rest of the room started shaking with it. Or at least that’s how it felt to her. “I’m _trying_ ,” she whined at Natasha’s remark, “Maybe _HYDRA_ really has to stop kidnapping _me_. I mean, you’d think they’d figure out it’s a dummy-headed idea.”

“Actually, it was A.I.M. this time.”

“Ohhh… But aren’t they supposed to be the science bad guys? Shouldn’t they be even smarter, or something?”

Tony, who was helping keep the captured A.I.M. goons contained, snorted. The few goons who were still conscious looked offended.

Darcy waved at Scott in his Ant-Man suit, gasping as if she’d only just spotted him, even though he’d actually been standing there for almost five minutes. “Thank you _so much_ for helping, Scotty!”

Since A.I.M. had taken Darcy to a base not far from San Francisco after kidnapping her, the Avengers had asked Scott and Hope to help with the rescue mission, along with the three ‘Wombats’, as Hank Pym irritably called them.

“You’re welcome!” Scott grinned back at her, though he looked a bit confused as to her behaviour.

He wasn’t the only one. “Doll, are you alright?”

Darcy hummed and giggled a bit before answering Bucky’s question. “They did give some kinda shot they said was a truth serum, and one guy gave me an aspirin ‘cause I had a headache… are you spinning? Or am _I_ spinning?”

Luis, one of the ‘Wombats’, winced. “Oh, I know how a truth serum feels,” he said, “But I don’t think I acted like _this_.”

“It could have been a different recipe,” Natasha pointed out, gently stopping Darcy from spinning around in the office chair she was sitting on, “Or perhaps this is the result of the two different drugs interacting. Darcy’s right; the ‘science bad guys’ should have known better.” She shot a glare at said bad guys, who went from looking offended to piss-in-their-pants terrified.

“I didn’t tell them anything they wanted to know!” Darcy protested, “I solemnly pinky swear! They told me to tell them what I learned working with Jane, but I don’t _think_ they wanted to know her favourite Pop-Tart flavors and music and TV shows and stuff! But they didn’t _say_ they didn’t want to know that, so that’s all I told them!” She nearly smacked Bucky in the face as she spread her arms in a ‘Ta-da!’ pose.

Natasha nodded approvingly. “Good use of a diversion tactic,” she complimented, “We’ll see about teaching you a few more in the event that you find yourself in such a situation again.”

Bucky scowled fiercely. One of the A.I.M. agents may have actually pissed his pants at the sight. “I’d rather make sure she _doesn’t_ end up in such a situation again, thank you very much.” Forget HYDRA and other nutjobs shooting at him; Darcy’s rather distressing tendency to get kidnapped or at least targeted for kidnapping was going to be the death of him.

“Hey, we’re just glad you’re okay,” Hope said, smiling in amusement at Darcy’s antics.

Darcy grinned back at her. “And I’m so glad I finally got to meet all of you! I mean, I could already say I know the Avengers, and Ant-Man, but now I can say I know Team Ant-Man And The Wasp And The Wombats!”

“Isn’t that a bit of a mouthful?” Tony commented offhandedly.

“Do you really have to call us the ‘Wombats’?” Luis complained, “I mean, can’t we each get our own codenames?”

“And ones that don’t sound so lame?” one of the other two added.

Darcy’s grin grew even wider, and she pointed right at Luis. “Ooh! I’ve got one for you! You can be… KOALA-MAN!!!!!” She repeated her ‘Ta-da!’ pose, this time with the addition of jazz hands.

“What?!” Luis squawked, while his friends snorted.

“‘Cause you’re cute like a big teddy bear, and Pym called you guys Wombats, so Koala!” She looked _very_ proud with her reasoning.

Now the other two ‘Wombats’, as well as Scott and several Avengers present, were full-on laughing, while Luis looked torn between being pleased at being called cute and put out at the silly name. “I’m sure you can come up with something better than that, _se_ _ñorita_ ,” he told her.

“I come up with _great_ names!” Darcy insisted, “You should hear all the names I call Bucky when we’re having- mmph!”

Bucky smirked at his girlfriend, who was now glaring at him for covering her mouth with his metal hand (she was known for her tendency to bite when people did that). “How ‘bout we get a doctor to check you out, Doll? Make sure those drugs aren’t gonna do anything worse to you?”

“I don’t know,” Tony called after them as he practically carried her towards the exit, “I might want to hear a few of those- Ow! Romanoff!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darcy comparing Luis to a koala is kinda my own feelings about him. Blame Pym for calling him and the other two ‘wombats’ and making me think about marsupials.


	18. Hostage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: This chapter features a school shooting-type situation. If this could possibly trigger something, skip it.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

Darcy burst into the room, her cell phone clutched in her hand and playing the same news broadcast that was currently up on the big screen. “Tell me it’s a mistake!” she half-sobbed, “Tell me they’ve got the wrong school or even the wrong classroom, anything!”

Maria shook her head sadly. “They didn’t get it wrong. The team is on their way right now- hang on.” She answered a video call, bringing up the image of a stern-faced politician whose name Darcy probably should know but didn’t really care about it. “Senator,” Maria greeted him coolly.

“Agent Hill,” the senator said back, “Would you care to explain to me why the Avengers have been deployed to a hostage situation without authorisation?”

Darcy fumed. Who cared about authorisation when her baby was in danger?!

Luckily, Maria was there to communicate that very sentiment in a way that wasn’t likely to get her fired. “With all due respect, Senator, _you_ try telling an Avenger to _not_ rush to the rescue of a family member.” She gestured at the news broadcast about the grade school classroom being taken hostage. “That’s right, Senator, one of those children is a close relative of an Avenger. In this case, they all felt it was better to act quickly and ask for forgiveness later, rather than sit around and wait for permission and possibly for her to die. You have children, don’t you?”

The senator, suitably chastised, quickly ended the video call, telling Maria to wish the Avengers luck. Once that was taken care of, Maria turned her attention back to Darcy.

She knew she was one piece of bad news away from bursting into tears, but she _had_ to know. “What’s going on, Maria?”

Maria gently steered her to the nearest chair. “A man entered the school about an hour ago, armed with an assault rifle. He’s already been identified as a father of one of the students; his wife filed for divorce last year on grounds of abuse, and she’s just won a lawsuit for full custody of their son. The boy’s classroom is right next to the one he entered, so we think he got mixed up and burst into the wrong room, looking to take his son.”

Darcy choked out a sob. “Rebecca?”

“None of the children have been harmed,” Maria assured her, “Although the teacher appears to have taken a few hits, and another staff member has been sent to the hospital. FBI is on the scene, and plans are being made to get the children out safely. And with the team being on the scene now, their chances just got a whole lot better.”

That was Maria for you; she would give you all the facts, but knew how to do so without upsetting you any more than possible. But still…

“That’s my little girl in there,” Darcy whispered, “I don’t think I’ll be able to _breathe_ until she’s back in my arms.”

* * *

Bucky felt like he couldn’t breathe. When FRIDAY informed them of the situation, he was praying to whatever god existed that it was all a horrible nightmare, and that he would soon wake up in bed with his wife, their daughter sleeping safely and soundly in the next room.

But no matter how hard he tried to wake up, he couldn’t. He was still on the Quinjet, en route to Rebecca’s school and the hostage situation taking place there.

When they’d first sent her off to school, a huge part of Bucky had wanted to just bundle her up and have her tutored at home, instead. Even though her birth certificate was sealed, and measures were taken to keep any record of him having a child _off_ the record, he would always fear that HYDRA would find out and come for his daughter. Frankly, when he found out that a man with a gun had attacked her school and taken her hostage, he was honestly more surprised to find out that it _wasn’t_ HYDRA or any one of Bucky’s other enemies.

He stepped down off the ramp of the Quinjet, fighting the urge to charge in, beat down the gunman, scoop up his daughter, take her home, and never let her out of his sight. He clenched his fists at his side, watching while Steve held a quick but tense conversation with the FBI agent in charge, and stayed silent when they were lead to the makeshift command centre and filled in on everything.

The gunman had been identified, and his motives for the initial break-in were confirmed: he was an abusive, divorced father who’d just lost custody of his son and was trying to kidnap him out of the school. And somehow, he’d been too drunk to remember the correct classroom number, and now he’d locked himself in there with the teacher and twenty-one children. Including Rebecca.

Plans were made to incorporate the Avengers into the rescue mission. This required a lot more finesse than their usual missions. This was a delicate operation, and not one that could be solved by bursting in there and shooting things and busting heads.

Wanda and Bucky were both stationed just out of sight of the back window of the classroom, where they hoped to evacuate all the children if the classroom door was not an option (and it was looking like it wouldn’t be). Wanda was using her telepathy to monitor the thoughts of the gunman and his hostages. “They’re scared,” she whispered over the comm, “They don’t know what’s going on. But Rebecca’s staying calm. She knows you’ll come for her.” She gave Bucky a reassuring smile.

Steve was with the head negotiator, although he hadn’t said a word, or even made his and the Avengers’ presence known to the gunman. Sam, Thor, Tony, and Vision were flying overhead.

The negotiator was trying to convince the gunman to let the children go; the teacher himself offered to stay behind, so long as the kids went free. “He’s considering it,” Wanda murmured, “His mind is so scattered, so full of rage. He wants what he feels belongs to him – his son – and he’s ready to go through anyone to get him.”

The gunman made a new demand: he would let one child go if his son was brought to him in that child’s place. They had ten minutes to bring the boy to the door, or he would start shooting, beginning with the child he planned to release.

That child was Rebecca.

The selfish part of Bucky wanted to beg them to go through with the deal, to save his little girl. But he knew he couldn’t go through with dragging someone else’s little boy into the arms of a gun-wielding maniac. So they had ten minutes to take down said maniac.

They didn’t waste much of that time. The negotiator started talking again, claiming that he had agents fetching the boy, in order to draw the gunman’s attention towards the door. Bucky and Wanda crept over to the building, pressing themselves against the brick wall below the windows, which Wanda telekinetically unlatched.

The gunman was growling at the negotiator through the door when Wanda pulled his rifle out of his hands, taking away the thing that made him the most dangerous. Bucky darted in through the window and immediately engaged. It took him less than a minute to take the scumbag down, and all of his self-control to not go any further in front of the kids.

“DADDY!” Rebecca cried, running up and latching herself onto his leg as soon as the FBI agents took the gunman away. They would probably have to deal with that later, since only select school administrators knew Rebecca was the daughter of the Winter Soldier, and now she had just announced it to her entire class.

But for now, he just held his daughter in his arms, relieved that she was finally safe.

* * *

Rebecca clung to her father all the way back home. She didn’t remove her arms from around his neck until she spotted her mother, and practically launched herself into _her_ arms, instead. The exhausted family excused themselves from the debrief, and retired to their apartment. Bucky stripped off his armour and collapsed onto the bed, joining his wife and daughter. Rebecca, wrapped in her mommy’s arms, clutched at her daddy’s undershirt with shaking fists. “I was so scared,” she whispered, “I’m sorry. I tried to be brave like you, but it was so scary!”

When the tears started falling, Bucky gently turned her face up to look at him. “You have nothing to be sorry about,” he told her, “Being brave isn’t about not being scared. It’s about not letting the fear control you.”

“He’s right,” Darcy added, “When the big robot attacked in New Mexico, I was _so_ scared that I would get burned or stomped on. But I didn’t run around screaming and crying. And you didn’t do that, either. I’m _so_ proud of you, my Little Spark.”

“You are?” Rebecca turned her wet eyes onto her mother. “Really?”

“Really, really.”

Rebecca turned back to her father. “Do you get scared, Daddy?”

He kissed her on the forehead. “I was scared _today_ , Маленькая Искра. I was _terrified_ , just thinking about something bad happening to you.”

“So was I,” Darcy whispered into her daughter’s hair.

Rebecca sniffled. “It was so scary. I knew Daddy would come to save me, but I was still so scared!” Her crying began in earnest, but her parents just held her tighter, shedding a few tears themselves after a stressful and terrifying day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it just me, or do a lot of my chapters in this end with them cuddling in bed? By my count, Chapters 2, 11, and 13 all end that way, and other chapters usually feature some variant, though not necessarily at the end.
> 
> Маленькая Искра: Little Spark
> 
> Up next: Exhaustion


	19. Exhaustion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

Three o’clock in the morning was a terrible time to go to bed. It was dark enough to still be considered night, but you only had a small handful of hours before the sun was up and you were supposed to rise with it.

Darcy stumbled out the door of the lab, trailing behind Thor, who was carrying a sleeping Jane. The tiny scientist had passed out on her desk, which Darcy had taken as her cue to finally call it a night. She’d called Thor down, and the big guy was being very gracious about being woken up in the middle of the night to cart his girlfriend off to bed. The Thunder God lives on a different floor, and since Jane has more or less moved in with him now that he’s back to living on Midgard more or less full-time, he takes her to his apartment, leaving Darcy in the elevator, about to fall asleep on her feet.

Once the elevator opened to her floor, she trudged out, counting the doors on the right – one, two, three, three, four – until she reached hers. The door wouldn’t unlock, for some reason. Her key card wouldn’t work. Luckily, she had experimented with breaking locks after she got locked out of her apartment one time too many. So she let herself in. She dropped her bag and her phone on the kitchen table, shuffled to her bedroom, and collapsed on the bed.

“GAH!”

“AIIII!”

Darcy shrieked at the top of her lungs when her bed _moved_ underneath her, and actually shoved her onto the floor. She landed on her ass, falling back and whacking her head on the floor.

Then someone was on top of her, and something cold and sharp was pressed against her throat. A rough voice growled something in a foreign language in her ear. It took her dazed, sleep-deprived, and terrified brain several seconds to realise that she knew that voice, and a few more to remember who it belonged to. “Bucky?”

The other voice stopped abruptly, for about two seconds. “Darcy?” Bucky pulled the knife away and bolted mostly upright, still straddling her. “Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“Wha…”

* * *

Bucky blinked down at the girl still lying prone on the floor. His heart was beating so hard it felt like it was going to burst right out of his chest. He’d actually been sleeping soundly, for once, until a sudden weight pressing down on him had made him think he was being attacked, and he had reacted accordingly.

However, staring down at the most… _civilian_ person in the entire Tower, now lying on his bedroom floor where he’d thrown her, a whole new kind of dread was creeping up on him. “Darcy? Are you okay?” He swallowed. “I didn’t hurt you, didn’t I?”

“Wha…” She did _not_ sound uninjured.

“Darcy?!” He leaned back over her, trying to see if she had a head injury. His night vision was pretty good, but he was still having a hard time seeing. “J.A.R.V.I.S., hit the lights!”

Darcy screwed her eyes shut and winced as the lights turned on. “Noooo…” she moaned, “Too bright. Lemme sleep!”

She didn’t seem to be injured, so Bucky leaned back. “Wouldn’t it be better to do that in your own room?” he asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I _am_ in my room,” Darcy protested, blinking and looking around. She blinked even more as she clearly took in the knives on the bedside table and the complete lack of clutter. “Aren’t I?”

Bucky shook his head. “You’ve got the wrong apartment, Doll.” He then cocked his head as a thought came to his mind. “How did you get in here, anyway? I know for a _fact_ that the door was locked.”

“I got the wrong… huh? I thought I counted the rooms? When I got out of the e-e-elevator…” A huge, jaw-cracking yawn interrupted her mid-word, and it was then that Bucky realised that she wasn’t dazed from him knocking her down. She was tired. _Very_ tired. “And I got locked out of my apartment so many times, I learned how to crack the locks. I could do it in my sleep.”

“From the look of you, you _did_ do it in your sleep.”

“Blame Janie. And Nat. And Tony Fucking Stark. Nat made me get up at five to do training crap, which was a hell of a lot of running today, then Janie had to rearrange the heavy equipment but made _me_ do all the actual heavy lifting, and then Tony ‘borrowed’ me to run around New York looking for a birthday gift for Pepper with him even though we _all_ know he’s going to ignore me and buy something ridiculous online, and then I got back to the lab and Janie had me running around some more getting coffee and shit, and I think this is the first time I haven’t been standing or walking since I got outta bed, and _damn_ your carpet is so soft.”

Bucky blinked at her. “That’s a hardwood floor, Doll.”

“Mnnnn…” Darcy moaned and yawned again. That long, rambling sentence had probably tired her out even more. She shifted and squirmed a little, like she was trying to get more comfortable, and Bucky finally realised that he was still straddling her.

He jumped off her and set the knife still in his hand on the table. “I don’t think the floor is the best place to fall asleep, Darcy.”

“Ugh, I don’ wanna get uuuuup…” she groaned.

Bucky sighed. “Alright, then.”

Darcy gave a little squeak of surprise as he picked her up off the floor in a bridal carry. “Oh, you’re even softer than the floor!” Bucky, who had started out the bedroom door with every intent of taking her to her own apartment, stopped in his tracks as she nuzzled her face into the crook of his neck, reminding him that he also wasn’t wearing a shirt. Or pants, for that matter. The weather was hot enough that he’d stripped down to his boxers for sleeping. And he wasn’t comfortable with leaving his apartment in his underwear carrying a barely-conscious Darcy – or, possibly worse, potentially being seen coming _out_ of her apartment in his underwear.

So he set her down on his bed and started hunting through his dresser for pants and a shirt. He quickly found something suitable, but by the time he turned around, Darcy was already fast asleep, hugging his pillow and snoring very softly.

She looked so tired, he couldn’t bring himself to move her. Grateful that Steve was out for the night, he grabbed a few extra blankets, he pulled the covers over her and moved out to the living room, where he got himself settled on the couch.

* * *

He was woken at five oh one in the morning by Darcy’s phone ringing, and hurried to answer it before it woke her up.

 _“You’re late.”_ Natalia sounded casually unconcerned to the untrained ear, but Bucky had trained _her_ , so he could hear the thick undercurrent of annoyance running beneath it.

“Darcy’s calling in sick today,” he told his former student bluntly, “You, Stark, and Foster ran her into the ground yesterday, and she accidentally stumbled into my apartment and fell asleep within seconds of lying down on a bed. She’ll wake up when she’s gotten all the sleep she needs.”

Natalia was silent for several seconds before responding. _“I’ll let Doctor Foster know. How’d she even get in? There’s no way you left your own apartment unlocked.”_

“You know how people say they can do things in their sleep? Well, apparently that’s almost true with her and lock-picking.”

He heard an impressed-sounding hum. _“I’ll have to get her to show me how she did that. Once she’s awake, I mean. It could be one of the methods I already know, but I’m still curious.”_

“ _Only_ after she wakes up, and gets a proper meal into her. Somehow I don’t think she had much time to eat yesterday, either.”

 _“I made sure she had a light breakfast after the workout,”_ Natalia defended herself.

“Good. I’m still going to put something together for her.”

He could practically _hear_ Natalia’s smirk. _“Good for you, Yasha. They say the way to a **man’s** heart is his stomach, but it doesn’t hurt with us girls, either.”_

“I’m not-”

 _Click_. Natalia hung up before he could finish protesting, for the twelfth time, that he wasn’t sweet on Darcy Lewis, dammit!

Sighing, he went to check up on her. Thankfully, neither the phone’s ringing nor his conversation with Natalia seemed to have woken her up. She was still cuddling his pillow, although she had kicked the covers off and was now sprawled all across the bed. Her face looked several years younger when she slept, no stressed-out scowls or cocky smirks when she was at rest. For the first time since he’d met her, Darcy actually looked… peaceful. Content.

Bucky shook himself, realising that he’d been standing there in the doorway and watching her sleep for at least five minutes. He turned, shutting the door behind him, and made his way into the kitchen to make breakfast for the both of them.

Because that’s what friends do, after all. He and Darcy, they were just friends…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, friends _do_ make breakfast for friends, and let super-exhausted friends crash at their place. But ‘more than friends’ do that, too, don’t they?
> 
> Next up: Concussion


	20. Concussion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO sorry this is late! This did _not_ want to cooperate with me!
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

No one thought it was possible for a super-soldier to get a concussion.

However, no one ever thought to test that theory by smacking one of them upside the head with a god’s magic hammer, either.

Darcy honestly had to admit that it hadn’t crossed her mind that her pseudo-big-brother in Thor might be a bit upset to find her in bed with one of the world’s most prolific assassins when he came back from Asgard, but to be fair, if it had, she probably would have assumed that Heimdall had given him a heads-up, or something. But obviously he hadn’t, because the big guy had clearly _not_ expected to walk into her and Jane’s apartment to find her topless on the couch with an equally shirtless Winter Soldier on top of her, trying to undo her bra clasp while simultaneously attempting a tonsillectomy on her with his tongue.

They’d barely even looked up when Thor had given a yell of rage and charged forward, Mew-Mew swinging. Bucky jumped off the couch, running forward to stop the advancing threat before it could reach Darcy. Before Darcy could yell out and tell them to _stop_ , Bucky dove at Thor and tried to tackle the bigger man around the waist. Thor was knocked back on his ass, but he rallied and threw Bucky off, sending him crashing into the kitchen table.

“Thor, stop it!” Darcy screeched, but the Thunder God was already on his feet and throwing his hammer right at her boyfriend. Bucky dodged, pulling one of his ever-present knives, but neglected to check behind him. “LOOK OUT!”

Bucky was just turning his head as Mew-Mew slammed into it, throwing him violently to the floor. Thor caught his hammer and raised it again, only to stop when Darcy threw herself in front of him.

“STOP IT!”

“Lady Darcy, please move. This attack on you cannot be forgiven!” Darcy could actually feel her hair standing on end from the static buildup in the air thanks to his thunder powers.

“ _What attack?!_ That’s my _boyfriend_ , you _lunatic_!” Knowing that Thor would never strike her, much less with his hammer, she turned away from him and knelt down to check on Bucky. He wasn’t moving, and the side of his head was bleeding. “FRIDAY, get a medical team up here, NOW!” She felt for a pulse, panic welling up in her throat when, although she did find one, she got no response from Bucky, not even a twitch at her touch. Considering she could wake him from a dead sleep with a single brush of her fingers, this was _not_ a good sign. “Bucky? Baby, _please_ wake up!”

“Lady Darcy, I-”

“SHUT UP!” Darcy whipped her head around and glared angrily at him. “Just shut up! I don’t care what the fuck you have to say right now, just get out of my sight!”

“I-”

“GET OUT!”

* * *

Bucky didn’t wake up for a whole hour. Thor was lucky that Steve was on the other side of the country, or Captain America would have beaten his head in with his shield and his bare fists. Darcy also didn’t leave his side for that whole hour, not even to put her shirt back on (Clint, who’d arrived with the medical team, had thrust it into her hands and she’d slipped it on while jogging beside the stretcher).

When he did wake up, he had a throbbing headache that made him nauseous every time he moved his head, even a little. The lights in his hospital room were dimmed considerably, and everyone spoke to him in whispers, since super-senses and concussions were a hellish combination.

Bucky didn’t even remember the fight. Concussions were known to have memory loss as a symptom, and since it was something Bucky had already been struggling with, no one was really surprised. Darcy had to explain it to him very slowly, since he kept zoning out (attention difficulties were another symptom). She showed him the security footage from the hallway, to try and jog his memories, but nothing worked.

He had to stay in the infirmary for three days. Thanks to the serum, he healed remarkably faster than normal, but his head was still sore and he was having more trouble sleeping than usual.

Thor was waiting in Darcy and Jane’s apartment, along with Jane, who seemed to be there for supervisory reasons. In a complete contrast to their last interaction, the God of Thunder’s body language was anything but hostile; his head was bowed low, his shoulders hunched, and his hands tucked behind his back.

Bucky, on the other hand, stopped dead in the doorway the second he recognised Thor, looking like he was preparing for another fight. When Darcy tried to step in, he tucked her behind him instinctively. That had Thor getting a sad puppy look on his face, knowing that he was being perceived as a threat to someone he cared very much about.

“Sergeant Barnes, I deeply apologise. I should not have behaved so rashly nor so violently.”

Jane nudged him. “And…”

“And I should not have assumed that you were harming the Lady Darcy, or that she needed my assistance.”

“That’s right, I don’t,” Darcy muttered.

“And I…” Jane nudged him again. “In Asgardian tradition, such a blunder must be repaid by a weregild, as restitution.” Thor reached over to the (replacement) kitchen table, and picked up a pair of fancy leather knife sheaths. He tugged one knife out (Bucky instinctively reached for one of his own), revealing a shining silver blade that gleamed in the light. “I was told that the traditional weregild of red gold would not hold the same weight in this realm that it holds in others. These blades are of Asgardian make. They are stronger than steel, will never need to be sharpened for a hundred years, and should they be lost, they will instantly return to their sheaths.”

“Like Riptide?” Darcy asked curiously.

Thor grinned. “Yes, like the mighty sword of Perseus Jackson.” He handed the gift over to Bucky, who inspected the unsheathed knife carefully.

The blade was a pale silver, etched with what he and Darcy assumed were Asgardian runes. The handles was wrapped with a dark, chestnut-coloured leather that felt just right in his hand, and its balance made it perfect for both close-quarters combat and throwing. “Thanks,” he mumbled, before looking Thor in the eye and speaking more clearly, “These look amazing. Thank you.” He paused. “Um… do I have to say anything specific to say we’re even, or something?”

Thor smiled. “Nay. Again, I am truly sorry for the harm I have caused you. From what I have heard, you have been a most valued shield brother to the rest of the Avengers; they were most displeased when they learned what I had done.”

Jane snorted. “Hulk was _pissed_. He made Thor let him smack him around for a good two hours. And he only stopped when Steve came back from whatever classified mission he was on and wanted to take a turn.”

“Indeed. All of your friends have remonstrated with me, quite emphatically, that such behaviour will not be tolerated again.”

Bucky smirked. “Damn straight, it won’t.” An idea came to him. “Say, d’you want to head down to the training gym and see what these babies can do?”

Thor’s answering grin could have powered the entire Tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky’s new magic knives will probably make an appearance in other Avengers-related stories I may write in the future. I was planning on just having Thor apologise with only words, then I remembered the weregild concept at the last second and ran with it.
> 
> So, the next chapter, ‘Harsh Climate’, is coming right up. Consider that my weregild.


	21. Harsh Climate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve posted Chapters 20 and 21 together, so if you skipped straight to this one, please go back and read Ch 20 first.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

As the Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes was used to the frigid cold. It was a constant part of him, now; even in the summer, he could still feel the chill of cryo-freeze in his bones, no matter what he did to warm up. It must have all been in his head, however, because there was no way he could still be cold at midday in the middle of the fucking Sahara.

He’d been on a small-scale scouting mission with Steve, Sam, and Natalia, checking out a tip regarding a possible HYDRA base. That tip had more than paid off, as it turned out to be a base that Bucky had actually been to as the Winter Soldier; he’d been deployed from there during an assignment. What was even more disturbing, however, were the people.

Not the HYDRA agents, though. Their prisoners. Six people, all with powers, all kept in their own individual cages. Those cages were more like little transparent cells on wheels, really. And they were all being wheeled onto a small cargo plane, obviously being transferred elsewhere.

One of them was just a child, no older than twelve.

Natalia had wanted to simply tag the jet and track it to the new location – potentially giving them two bases at once – and bugging out of there, but Steve wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted to rescue those people, and he was going to do it _now_.

The ensuing fight had been chaotic, and it had ended with Bucky being stuck on the jet as it flew off with the only prisoner they’d managed to load on board before the four Avengers went on the attack. He took out the other agents on board, and decided to free the prisoner before taking out the pilot.

It was the wrong call. The enhanced prisoner apparently had some sort of powers that allowed her to control metal, and upon being freed, she immediately began to dismantle the plane in mid-air. Bucky tried to stop her, only to be flung out the rear hatch by his metal arm.

He hit the sandy ground _hard_. Hard enough to stun him for a couple minutes. When he finally struggled to his feet, he could see a plume of smoke from the crashed aircraft.

Now he was faced with a dilemma. Should he keep going and check on the prisoner, and see if she survived? Or should he head back to the HYDRA base, where Steve and Natalia were? On the one hand, he didn’t want to approach an apparently unstable powered person without backup. On the other, however, he could clearly see where the plane’s wreckage was, and while he had been a bit distracted with fighting the agents on board, he’d gotten the distinct feeling that the pilot hadn’t been flying in a straight line, so he wasn’t sure which direction the base was in.

Deciding that heading towards a known destination was better than wandering aimlessly in the desert, Bucky opted to start staggering towards the smoke coming from the wrecked plane.

He realised he was in trouble less than ten minutes into his hike. His head was pounding, and despite the fact that he was walking at a fairly slow pace, he was drenched in sweat and couldn’t catch his breath. He tugged off his armour, feeling like he was baking alive inside of it, and fashioned a makeshift head covering out of his undershirt. He needed to get out of the sun, and the best chance he had was getting to the plane and maybe using some of the debris as shelter, assuming it wasn’t _all_ on fire.

He kept going, struggling to walk as the sand constantly shifted beneath his feet, and the seemed to almost tilt back and forth, like the deck of a ship. It wasn’t until his face crashed into the burning sand that he finally figured out that he was the one off-balance.

His arm _burned_. Many would expect the metal limb to be cooler than the rest of his body, but the mechanical components that ran pretty much twenty-four-seven ensured that it always stayed warm. In this climate, however, it was hot to the point of being painful. Distantly, Bucky recalled one instant during his days as HYDRA’s tool, when the damn thing had actually overheated, although he couldn’t bring to mind the exact circumstances. All he remembered was that some of the electronics had shorted out, screwing with both his ability to control the arm _and_ the sensory input it gave him. He had a feeling that it was getting close to that point, now.

Even as he pushed himself to his feet, he wondered when or _if_ anyone was going to find him. That sense of despair wasn’t unfamiliar, either. When he’d first woken up in a HYDRA lab after falling off that damn train, he’d refused to believe them when they told him that the world all thought him dead, that there would never be a rescue mission for him. Or when they told him that Steve was dead. He’d refused to listen to anything they told him. But as the days had gone by, and no one came for him, his faith had slowly wavered and faded. The day he finally gave up and accepted that none of his friends or allies were even trying to come and save him was the day that HYDRA had broken him.

He knew better, now. He knew that Steve wouldn’t rest until he’d searched every square inch of this godforsaken desert. And that he had means at his disposal that hadn’t _existed_ back in the forties. The real question was if Bucky would still be alive when he was found.

Where was the smoke? Bucky blinked, realising that he’d been focusing on the sand in front of him, in an effort to not fall over again, and not on the horizon, where the smoke from the downed HYDRA plane was supposed to be guiding him. He looked up, and saw nothing but sand dunes and sky. He spun around, even as it caused him to stumble dizzily and fight down the urge to throw up.

Nothing.

He saw no smoke, no point of reference, _nothing_ to help him figure out where he was or where he needed to go.

With a choked sob, Bucky dropped to his knees in despair.

* * *

The five rescued superhumans were scared, and tired, and they wanted to go home. The young boy had fallen asleep in the lap of one of the women, apparently his aunt. But Steve, Sam, and Natasha weren’t turning the Quinjet around until they found Bucky.

They’d already placed a call to the other Avengers and the new S.H.I.E.L.D., and plenty of aid had been offered and readily accepted. Tony and Coulson had devoted every Stark Industries and S.H.I.E.L.D. satellite in the area to scanning the desert surface, Thor had gone to Asgard to ask for Heimdall’s aid, and pretty much the entire Avengers team – as well as a group Coulson called the ‘Secret Warriors’ – was en route to help cover more ground.

Meanwhile, Steve, Sam, and Natasha were searching the old-fashioned way, flying over the desert and scanning the sand with their own eyes (infra-red wasn’t nearly as useful in this heat) in an attempt to spot him.

They found the wreckage of the HYDRA aircraft pretty quickly, but all the bodies on board and nearby were all confirmed to be the HYDRA agents and the prisoner Bucky had been attempting to rescue. There was no sign of him. So they started searching in a spiral pattern, hoping he hadn’t gotten far.

That plan changed when Tony sent them satellite footage of the crash and the events leading up to it. Before the plane had even started falling out of the sky, something – make that someone – had fallen out of the back. Natasha punched in the corresponding coordinates and started flying that way.

They almost missed him. If Steve’s eyesight hadn’t been enhanced by the Serum, he likely would have dismissed the dark speck on the ground as maybe a spot of dirt on the Quinjet’s windows. But it had been, so when he caught a glimpse of something on the desert surface, he yelled for Natasha to turn the goddamn plane around. They landed mere yards away from the speck, which they confirmed even from that distance to most definitely be a person.

Bucky was unconscious, his skin red and inflamed, his pulse rapid and weak. He’d lost the body armour off his upper body somewhere along the way, exposing his whole torso, but had his undershirt loosely wrapped around his head. His prosthetic arm was so hot, it actually scalded Sam’s hand when he grabbed it while trying to drag Bucky back onto the Quinjet.

As soon as they got him on board, Natasha flew the Quinjet straight to the nearest medical centre they could remotely trust, radioing their friends to alert them of the change in plans. Steve stayed by Bucky’s side, using ice packs from the many medical packs on board to try and bring his temperature down. Same helped him, along with one of the HYDRA prisoners they’d rescued, saying she’d been in training to become and EMT before she was snatched up.

Bucky woke up, for about a minute or so, just as they were approaching the hospital.

“Bucky!” Steve gasped in relief, “Thank God! It’s okay, Buck. It’s okay. We’re getting you to a hospital now. You’re gonna be fine.”

At least half of him expected Bucky to react like he had at Azzano, to smile and just be glad that help was finally there. But instead, Bucky just stared at him, his eyes broken and disbelieving. A single tear escaped before those eyes shut again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: ‘Friendly Fire’. That one’s actually finished, so it _will_ be coming on time tomorrow.


	22. Friendly Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one’s a little bit different, as neither Bucky nor Darcy are on the receiving end of the whump this time.
> 
> Also, I have never played paintball, so if I screw up something with the rules, that’s why.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Bucky frowned, trying to figure out the straps on his paintball helmet, “I mean, I’m not intruding on anything, am I?”

Darcy snorted, wiggling into her boots. “Hell, no. Significant others get invited into the game all the time. You should’ve seen the time Jasper brought his Navy lieutenant girlfriend – this was before he met his husband. I was lucky enough to be on their team, and we _crushed_ it! Imagine how well we’ll do with _you_ on the team!”

It was a day that Darcy usually dreaded: the day of the annual Brewer Family Reunion Paintball Match. She was always one of the first casualties, especially when her least favourite step-cousin, Deanna, was playing, and regardless of whether or not they were on the same team. But this year, Darcy had brought along her new boyfriend, a super-soldier with super speed, super reflexes, and – most importantly – sniper training from _before_ he became a super-soldier. Aside from being able to brag about having bagged an actual _Avenger_ (and a war hero prior to that) as a boyfriend, she just _knew_ she was going to have a _much_ better year at paintball.

“Are you sure this isn’t cheating, though?”

Darcy shrugged. “Meh. As long as the refs are okay with it, it’s not cheating.”

“If you say so.”

Once they were all geared up, the pair made their way to the paintball grounds that the Brewer family rented every summer, along with the numerous other relatives. Most of them were the cousins of Cecil Brewer – Darcy’s stepfather – and their kids and grandkids. Cecil’s branch of the family only consisted of his wife and step-children, and his late brother’s daughter Deanna Brewer, who was four years Darcy’s junior and sweet as pie to literally everyone except for Darcy and her mother and siblings. She even flirted with Bucky, even after – no, _especially_ after finding out he was there with Darcy.

And speak of the devil, there she was, waiting with the rest of the family, twirling her ponytail around her finger and honest-to-God _batting her eyes_ at Darcy’s boyfriend.

When the teams were announced, Darcy sighed as Deanna was assigned to the pink team alongside them. And of course Deanna took it upon herself to collect the box of their team’s ammo and hand out the clips to everyone, and when she got to Bucky, she actually tried to take his hand in one of hers and place the clip in his palm with the other. Bucky quickly evaded her grasp and plucked the clip right out of her fingers, causing her to blink in confusion. He also swiped clips right out of the box for Darcy and her younger sister Kristie.

The game was a basic ‘capture the flag’ scenario. The playing field was divided in half, and each team had a brightly-coloured flag at the far end of their half. The objective of the game was to retrieve the opposing team’s flag and bring it back to the other side of the ‘border’. If an entire team was eliminated before they could achieve that goal, the other team won by default. Any hit to the head or torso was deemed an instant kill (Bucky whispered to Darcy that that was _so_ not true in real life, and she elbowed him to shut him up). A hit to either arm meant you could no longer use that arm to shoot, and while shooting one-handed was possible, it was rather awkward. A hit to either leg meant that limb was also taken out of commission, and a hit to the pelvic region (one of the cousins apparently had an unholy obsession with shooting his opponents in the groin or the ass, male or female) disabled both. Attempting to wipe off the paint would see the ‘wiper’ instantly disqualified. If you were eliminated, you were to holster your weapon and immediately leave the field with one or both hands up. They were mostly playing on the honour system, although there were designated referees patrolling the paintball field, as well, and shooting one of them was also an instant disqualifier.

The pink team’s captain quickly assigned Bucky to position himself on the tallest structure on their side of the field, using his sniper training to give them an advantage. Darcy was also put on defense, patrolling her own section roughly to his ten o’clock. Kristie was assigned to the group that would be infiltrating the other team’s territory, and Deanna was put on the front line border defense.

Bucky easily picked off every member of the blue team that popped into his range, giving Darcy and many of their other teammates nothing to do. Until one group managed to pull a fast one, with some acting as human shields and allowing their teammates to advance closer to the flag. He could have shot those ones, but he saw Darcy raise her gun, and, knowing that Natalia and Clint had been teaching her how to shoot (he’d actually subbed in for them, one week), decided that it would be better to let her have _some_ fun.

Darcy’s training had certainly paid off, as she rained pink hell down on a cousin and an uncle, and Bucky was having so much fun watching that he didn’t notice the gun aiming at her back from behind an obstacle until it was too late.

He fired at the same time as his girl’s attacker, and pink paint splattered all over both Darcy’s back and the helmet and goggles of a very shocked Deanna, who clearly had _not_ been expecting the shot that landed right between her eyes.

Deanna would whine and complain about it later, but the team captain had seen the whole thing, and since Bucky could honestly say that he hadn’t seen the pink bandana tucked into her waistband that labelled her as a teammate, he was ruled as being in the right.

Even though she’d been eliminated, Darcy crowed for days about the little minx getting what was coming to her.

Deanna never tried to flirt with Bucky again, and even avoided him throughout the rest of the reunion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Self-sacrifice.


	23. Self-Sacrifice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this is a little late. Chapter 22 was the last one that was completely written before the morning of the day it was supposed to be posted. So I can’t make promises that the remaining 8 chapters will be one time.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

“GET DOWN!”

Bucky Barnes thought he was prepared for anything, but apparently his girlfriend suddenly screaming and tackling him to the ground did not count as ‘anything’. All the air flew out of his lungs in a big _whoosh_ upon impact with the ground.

“Darcy?” he gasped, trying to get his breath back while simultaneously attempting to move Darcy off of him. “Darcy?!”

His elbow bumped into the barrel of his weapon, and his blood turned to ice as the terrible thought entered his mind. Was she shot? Did she just take a bullet for him?! He shoved her off his body as gently as he could, then started searching for the gunshot wound. He felt something slick and wet under his fingers, and rolled her over slightly to see the bright blue liquid running down – wait. Blue?

And suddenly he could breathe again, as he remembered where they were.

Darcy groaned and rolled over, sitting up. “Damn it,” she groaned, “Tell me that wasn’t Deanna, at least.”

Bucky peeked over the edge of their shelter and ducked as Jasper – he was pretty sure it was Jasper under all that gear – fired a few more blue paint pellets at his head. “It was your damn brother,” he groused, “Guess he was trying to get me back for last night.”

Darcy chuckled. “That was his own damn fault. Who challenges a super-soldier to an arm-wrestling match?”

“Well, he’d had about four beers, so I’d say a drunk man does that.”

She sighed. “Well, either way, I’m out.” She blew him a kiss from beneath her paintball mask. “Kick ass, Babe.” With her paint marker slung on her back, she walked out, hands up.

Bucky picked his own marker back up and carefully maneuvered himself into a crouch. Unlike last year’s match, he had been put on the offense division of their team (pink again), and was trying to infiltrate the blue team’s side and get their flag. Darcy had stuck with him, but now that she was out, he was all alone.

The flag was actually within sight, but it had been placed in the middle of a wide expanse of ground with no cover, and blue team members had positioned themselves around it, ready to shoot anyone who came at it like fish in a barrel. He’d have to take them out before he could make a move.

Starting with Jasper, of course. Bucky breathed in, breathed out, and listened closely. When he focused, he could hear the sound of Jasper’s anticipatory breathing, and the crunch of the ground under his boots as he shifted his weight. He was stepping slowly out of his own cover, moving towards Bucky’s position. And so was one of his teammates, from a similar direction.

He inhaled once more, and pivoted on his heel as he stood up. He fired two shots, a a third when he spotted another opponent stepping out of her own bunker, then he ducked back down. A second later, he heard – and felt – a few paintball shells smacking the other side of the wall. He was pretty sure there was only one guard left.

This, he could handle.

He ducked out, sprinted passed a still-confused Jasper, and raced for the flag, shooting back at his one remaining opponent. He yanked the flag out of its stand just as one lone blue pellet slammed into his right bicep.

Skidding into a new shelter, he grimaced at the blue spatter dripping down his right arm. He wouldn’t be able to carry both the flag and his paint marker at the same time, with his right arm ‘out of commission’. So he holstered his marker, gripped the flag in his left hand, and bolted out of his hiding spot.

While most people would have stumbled and tripped over the uneven ground, Bucky moved smoothly across the terrain, relying on his enhanced reflexes and agility to get him over – and under – any obstacles in his path. He was pretty sure he jumped right over the head of one of the blue team members in a trench.

He almost didn’t stop when he crossed the border line that marked the division between the two teams’ territories. Only the rousing cheers from the rest of the pink team clued him in to the fact that he had just won them the game.

* * *

Dinner was held at a large, nearby pub, with a second-floor party room that the Brewer clan had rented out. It also had a balcony accessible from that floor, and that was where Bucky retreated when the press and the noise of the crowd became too much. Enhanced senses combined with PTSD was a _bitch_ , especially in situations with lots of loud noises, jostling crowds, and overpowering smells. He just needed a few minutes to breathe, to collect himself. Darcy had helped, distracting one _very_ chatty great-aunt long enough for him to get away. He caught a glimpse of her through the glass windows in the old oak doors, playing pool with her sister, brother, and brother-in-law, as well as one or two of her many second cousins.

The first time he’d been to one of these things, the various relatives had been wary of him. He’d been a new member of the Avengers, and all the public had heard was that he’d used to work for HYDRA and then switched back to the good guys’ side. The circumstances of his time under HYDRA’s thumb had been largely subject to gossip and rumours, so many were skeptical of his apparent change of heart. While Darcy’s mother, Christa, had been warm and friendly in greeting him, he’d overheard her pulling Darcy aside and asking if she was _sure_ he was safe to be around.

This year, however, they were much more comfortable around him, since last year’s reunion had passed mostly without incident (well, without incidents involving him). Winning the paintball match had certainly helped with that. Unfortunately, that new level of comfort around him meant that they were perfectly comfortable with slapping him on the back and getting right in his personal space, despite Darcy’s careful reminders of his PTSD.

So now, here he was, hiding out on the balcony, a beer in hand (the pub actually had some really good brands, so even though he couldn’t get drunk, at least he still had some decent choices, taste-wise), taking in deep breaths and trying to restore his heartbeat to a reasonable pace.

The sudden swell in noise ratcheted that heartrate back up. He spun around to face the tall, brunette woman coming through the door. Christa Church-Brewer was like a taller version of her daughter, with the same spark and quirky personality. She also had the same protective streak, so the fierceness that came out when Darcy was defending the Avengers from their political critics was also present when Christa defended her children. She’d grilled him for a full ninety minutes when she first met him last year, mostly about his intentions towards her daughter, but also about the additional dangers that came with dating him, such as his stability and the kind of people that might want to hurt him through Darcy.

So, naturally, he couldn’t help but feel a little nervous at the thought of being left alone with her.

“Nice shooting today,” she commented casually, coming over to lean on the railing with her own drink in hand, “And running, for that matter. Darcy said you were fast, but some things you just have to see to believe.”

Bucky cleared his throat. “Uh… Thanks.”

“Of course, you still weren’t fast enough to dodge _my_ shot.”

He blinked at her. “That was _you_? _You_ shot me in the arm?”

Christa smirked. “Yep.” She drew out the ‘y’ and popped the ‘p’, just like Darcy would. “I may not have been military, but my dad sure loved to hunt! Taught me everything he knew.” She took a drink, swallowed, then continued. “I also saw my little girl take a paintball for you.” Now she was fixing him with a piercing gaze. “She didn’t hesitate, and while this time it was just a harmless game, I can’t help but wonder, with the sort of life you live, if one day it might be something much worse.”

Bucky swallowed. He understood immediately what she was getting at. “When she took that hit for me, I… Sometimes, I forget where I am. I hear a loud noise, and my brain automatically thinks it’s a gunshot, or something like that. For a moment, there, I thought she’d actually taken a bullet for me. I mean, I remembered what was going on once I saw the blue paint, but before that…” He shuddered. “It felt like my heart had just stopped. I couldn’t breathe. I would _never_ ask Darcy to do something like that for me, but I can’t guarantee she wouldn’t, and I don’t think I’d be able to stop her. Not always, anyway.”

Christa smiled wryly. “That’s my little girl. Once she’s decided you’re worth fighting for, she _fights_ , and she goes all in.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that. But telling the likes of Christine Everhart where to shove it on national television is a _lot_ different than jumping in front of a bullet.”

“I know that. And I know that nothing either of us says is going to convince her to stay away from you, or from the life she’s chosen for herself. Truth be told, a part of me doesn’t want to. She’s happier with you and the Avengers than I’ve ever seen her. So I’ve got only one thing to ask of you.”

She looked him right in the eye, her expression dead serious. Bucky swallowed again, but did not break eye contact.

“I need to know if you feel just as strongly for my daughter as she feels for you. Would you take a bullet for my daughter? Without hesi-”

“In a heartbeat, Ma’am,” Bucky responded, without hesitation.

Christa blinked, then she leaned back, apparently satisfied. “Good. While I don’t want to see her having to go to your funeral, I’d much rather it not be hers, understand?”

“I understand. Completely. I’d jump between her and a hundred bullets, if that’s what it takes.”

“Well, I’ll settle for doing your best to keep yourself and Darcy out of situations where either of you might have to do that. Deal?”

Bucky breathed a sigh of relief. “Deal.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally picture Allison Janney as Darcy’s mom – picture her in her role as Bonnie on ‘Mom’, though mostly only in appearance.
> 
> Next chapter: Drowning.


	24. Drowning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I’d let Bucky take a turn at being the one not getting tortured or suffering panic attacks.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

“I’m not going to ask you again, сука. How do I get into Avengers Tower? Tell me, and I’ll let you live.”

“Чушь собачья,” Darcy spat, using one of the swear words Clint had taught her, “You’ll kill me no matter what I say.”

A tear ran down her face, because yeah, she was scared. She didn’t want to die. But if she was going to go either way, she’d rather go out without giving HYDRA – they hadn’t identified themselves as such, but it was obviously HYDRA – anything on the man she loved.

The interrogator smirked at her. “True. Then I shall revise my promise. Tell me, and I’ll make your death a quick one.”

Seventy years. Bucky had survived seventy years of torture at the hands of these people. It would be shameful of her to roll over and take the easy way out. So she gathered up whatever spit she could in her mouth (she hadn’t been given anything to drink since she was brought in here, however long ago that was) and then spat it right in the dickwad’s face.

Said dickwad barely even blinked. Slowly, calmly, he wiped the glob of spit off his cheek. Then he reached out and caressed her cheek, before firmly gripping her chin. “Such spirit,” he commented, “I can see what our Asset saw in you.” He turned to one of his minions. “Получить шланг.” He grinned nastily at Darcy. “It’s a shame; we could use good agents with your fierce loyalty, Miss Lewis.”

Darcy’s grasp of Russian was tenuous at best, but she knew that he’d ordered his mook to fetch _something_. And she was _damn_ sure that she wasn’t going to like whatever it was.

Mere minutes later, it was confirmed.

The ‘something’ that the henchman was ordered to fetch was a hose. An ordinary garden hose, the kind that could be bought at any home improvement store, trailing out the door and presumably connected to a water source. He also brought a dirty-looking square of cloth. A cold feeling of dread settled in the pit of Darcy’s stomach.

She tried to control her breathing as they laid the cloth over her nose and mouth, but she couldn’t stop the tears. As they lifted the hose over her head, she held her breath, shut her eyes, and pictured her lover’s face in her mind to help her remember why she was hanging on.

The water was cold. Ice-cold. It ran down her face and plastered the rag to her skin. An automatic attempt to inhale through her nose only saw her nostrils being filled with the fluid.

Darcy held her breath for as long as she could, but her body could only handle her screaming lungs for so long before it forced her mouth open.

The freezing water rushed down her throat and into her lungs, swapping the burn for the cold. It _hurt_. She thrashed around, trying to dislodge the sodden rag on her face, to get out of the stream of water, to throw herself forward and cough up the water in her lungs. But her restraints held fast. There was no escape for her.

* * *

It was Wanda who found her in the basement. The HYDRA safehouse was little more than a simple two-story house in the middle of fucking suburbia. No matter what happened, this operation was going to attract a _lot_ of attention. At least since Darcy had accepted a new position as the Avengers’ PR manager, the higher-ups had approved of a rescue mission; the more cynical among the team were of the opinion that they wouldn’t have gotten the same response for a mere lab intern.

It was the garden hose running in through the back door that caught Wanda’s attention, and she followed it into a room where three bulky men were standing over a limp, prone figure in a chair, holding the end of the hose over its face. The HYDRA agents were flung into the basement walls with little disregard for their safety, but no one cared all that much. Wanda stepped over the still-running hose and ripped the wet cloth off of Darcy’s face. “In here!”

It was the work of seconds to remove her restraints and get her lying on the floor. Then Wanda immediately began CPR. She hadn’t been trained in the technique until she joined the Avengers, but it was a mandatory skill for every employee of the Initiative to learn. Her hands were shaking, but she immediately started chest compressions. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Two breaths. One, two, three… When she started tiring, Sam took over for her. Steve was in charge of keeping Bucky calm, although he wasn’t having too much success, while the others secured the three agents.

Sam was in the middle of giving Darcy a set of two breaths when she started coughing, water spilling from her mouth. Sam rolled her over and let her cough up as much as she could. Bucky finally broke free of Steve’s grip and dropped to his knees by his girlfriend’s side.

“It’s okay, Doll,” he told her, his voice rough and shaking, “It’s going to be okay. I’m right here, Darce. They’re not going to hurt you anymore.”

* * *

Darcy fell unconscious after coughing up the water. To be more accurate, she never really regained consciousness in the first place. Bucky damn near killed the HYDRA agents, who ultimately had to be brought into custody via other means, because there was no _way_ he was going to be allowed on the Quinjet with them, and there was _absolutely no way_ he was leaving Darcy’s side.

She was barely breathing, so she was fitted with an oxygen mask. She was so, _so_ still. It was unnatural, coming from someone who was always on the move, whether she was bouncing around the kitchen to her music or tapping her pencil on her desk or running her fingers through his hair…

He held her hand tightly, trying and not quite succeeding at keeping the tears from falling. “Please don’t leave me, Doll,” he whispered, not quite caring if the other Avengers heard him, “I don’t think I can handle loosing anything else to those bastards. And I _know_ I can’t handle losing you. So please, Darcy, I need you to fight. Maybe it’s selfish of me to ask, but I know you, Darcy Lewis. I know you’re the only person on the face of this goddamn planet who can out-stubborn me and Steve, so I _know_ you can fight this. That’s one of the things I love most about you, Doll. You’ve always been ready to fight for me, now it’s time to fight for your own life.”

* * *

_Ten Days Later…_

Bucky burst into the bathroom when he heard the choked whimpers over the sound of the running water in the shower. Darcy was curled up in a ball against the wall opposite the shower. Water ran down her naked body, but Bucky’s observant brain noted that her hair was barely even damp.

“Darcy?” He knelt down slowly after determining that there was no actual danger in the room. Absently, he wondered if this was what he looked like in the middle of a panic attack. “Doll, what is it?”

Darcy sobbed, rubbing at her face. “I- I can’t,” she gasped, “The water…”

Bucky looked between his girlfriend and the shower, and slowly his brain made the connection. She’d felt the spray of the shower water on her face and had a flashback to being water-boarded by HYDRA last week. He’d had more than a few incidents like that when he first came out of the cold, and he _still_ had them from time to time.

First things first, he got back up and turned the shower off, in case the sound of the running water was at all bothering Darcy. Then he sat back down next to her, grabbing her towel on the way over and draping it around her. “Hey,” he whispered, “It’s alright. ‘M right here. And those bastards are _never_ going to see the light of day again.” Carefully, he tugged her into his lap, ignoring the dampness he immediately felt on his clothes.

“Does it get any better?” Her voice was barely over a whisper. If he hadn’t had enhanced hearing, there was a chance that he may not have heard it at all. “Am I ever going to stop being scared of them?”

Bucky opened his mouth, to tell her that yes, it would get better, that she’d be able to move on as if nothing had happened, but nothing came out.

Because he knew better than that. And he couldn’t lie to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Сука (suka): bitch, slut
> 
> Чушь собачья (chush’ sobach’ya): bullshit
> 
> Получить шланг. (Poluchit’ shlang.): Get the hose.
> 
> Coming up next: Restraints


	25. Restraints

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Bucky in this one, sorry.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein. Andrew Carman and Millicent Kaur are characters of my own creation.

“This is harassment!”

Darcy grumbled as her yells continued to go ignored. She huffed and plopped down onto the bench of her holding cell, grimacing as she examined her wrists.

The cuts weren’t that deep, and they were barely even bleeding, but they still hurt, and the reddened skin around them was _definitely_ going to bruise. Just flexing her hands sent a small amount of pain shooting up her arms, but she needed to get the feeling back into her fingers. She was _definitely_ setting Tony’s lawyers on the bastard who did this. Badge or no badge.

One of her best friends in high school had a cop for a mother, and they both looked up to that woman. She was a strong, confident police officer who did her best to help people, both on and off the job. The officer who dragged Darcy in here was the kind of cop who would make her curse a blue streak and call a disgrace to the uniform.

Eventually, a different officer came and escorted Darcy to a room with a phone. Darcy cursed speed dial – which she normally considered a good thing while simultaneously taking it for granted – for the fact that she didn’t have a whole lot of phone numbers memorised. Luckily, there were a few that Clint had insisted on drilling into her brain, in case she was in a situation where she couldn’t use her cell phone. After thinking on it, she chose a number and punched it in, waiting for an answer, which she got after only one ring.

_“This is Pepper.”_

“Hey, Pep, it’s Darcy. Uh… I’m at the police station, and I kinda need a lawyer. And a check into my arresting officer, if you don’t mind. A misogynistic douchebag named A. Carman, badge number 5212, I’m pretty sure.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the second officer, a woman, rolling her eyes, muttering something that sounded like “Of course it’s him.”

* * *

Millicent Kaur was a five-foot-two spitfire in a designer suit, and she walked into the police precinct like she owned it. “I’m here to speak my client, Darcy Lewis.” Her tone brokered no argument. When she was led to Darcy’s holding cell, her eyes immediately zeroed in on the bruise on her cheek, and then fixated on her mangled wrists. “Miss Lewis, I’m Millicent Kaur, your attorney. Ms. Potts sent me. Care to tell me what happened?”

Darcy sighed, exhausted. “I was out on a blind date, the guy was a perv, so I ended it early. I stopped at a bar on my way back to the Tower, and some other guy, Perv Number Two, came up to me and started hitting on me. I turned him down, like, three times, before I got fed up and started to walk out. Only, when I turned around, he reached over and grabbed my ass, pinched it _really_ hard. So, I turned around and I punched him. Only there was an on-duty cop in there, for whatever reason, and the guy arrested me for assault, and did absolutely nothing about the guy who assaulted _me_! Dude just said something about how I was asking for it because of the dress I was wearing, and the jackass with a badge _agreed_ with him! Even accused me of being a hooker!”

She knew her voice was getting louder and shriller as she continued her rant, but she was past the point of caring, right now. “This dress isn’t even all that skimpy! I mean, am I supposed to walk around in a nun’s habit, or something?! Seriously, what is it with men these days?! I didn’t ask to have boobs this big-”

“Miss Lewis,” Ms. Kaur interrupted her, “I think I get the picture. I’ve looked into the arresting officer like you asked, and I think I should be able to get you out of here without any charges being pressed.”

* * *

Sure enough, Darcy and Ms. Kaur (“Call me Millicent”) were walking out of there less than an hour later, after Millicent glared one of the cops into treating and bandaging the cuts on Darcy’s wrists. A complaint of police brutality had already been filed, but that could be dealt with in the morning.

Or not. Officer Andrew Carman caught sight of them walking out, and he was _not_ happy. “Are you kidding me?” he snapped, loud enough to be heard by everyone in the lobby, “I only just brought this lunatic in, and she walks out with a fancy lawyer? What the hell?!”

Darcy glared at him and clenched her fists, but she knew better than to punch this asshat in the middle of the police station. Besides, Millie had this taken care of.

“Andrew Carman?” she checked, raising an eyebrow coolly, “I would suggest you keep your voice down, and call your union rep. You’re going to need one.”

Carman snorted. “What for?”

“My client and I have already filed a complaint to your supervisor regarding your discriminatory behaviour. And unlike the last three, your family won’t be able to make this one go away.”

Apparently, Carman’s whole family was well-placed in either politics or law enforcement, and they were always able to sweep the previous complaints against him under the rug. This wasn’t the first time he’d sided against a young woman who’d been sexually harassed or assaulted and fought back. But this _was_ the first time the woman in question had connections that trumped his.

But it didn’t seem that Carman had processed that, yet. He snorted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Missy. I’ve never done anything wrong. Why don’t you just go back to whatever discount firm you work for, and forget about fighting for a lost cause like _that_.” He gestured at Darcy, more to her boobs than any other part of her, but to be fair, he wasn’t even _looking_ at her.

Millicent’s eyes narrowed, not missing the ‘Missy’ comment.

“I mean, what kind of firm represents prostitutes, anyway?”

“Seriously?!” Darcy snapped, “Are you seriously accusing me of being a hooker?!”

Carmen huffed, his elevator eyes full of both male appreciation and disdain. “Well, who else would wear a dress like that?”

Darcy glanced down at her dress. It showed a bit of cleavage, and it did fit her a bit snugly, but it went past her knees and wasn’t at all scandalous. “Uh… someone on a date? Someone at a wedding? There’s nothing wrong with what I’m wearing! A dress that doesn’t have a turtleneck is not an automatic ‘I want to sleep with you’ sign!”

She could have gone on, but was stopped by Millicent’s gentle grip on her arm. “That’s enough, Darcy. Save it for his hearing.” She raised her voice a little, to be sure that Carman could hear her. “You know as well as I do that Mister Stark doesn’t take kindly to those who bring harm to his friends and employees.” She made a point of gesturing to Darcy’s bandaged wrists, where Carman had fastened the handcuffs so tightly that they’d drawn blood.

Carman paled a little, but didn’t lose his bravado. “Stark?”

Darcy gave him a sunny smile. “My boss. Tony Stark. I’m the official PR Manager for the Avengers Initiative. It’s a _very_ well-paid position, so even if I _was_ willing to turn tricks, which I’m _not_ , I sure as hell don’t need the money.” She turned back to Millicent. “So, how about we get me back to the Tower? I think that weekly game night Hawkeye started is still going on, and I wanna see if I can kick Cap’s ass at Mario Kart.”

She saw Carman’s face pale and fall as she and her awesome lawyer (who was _totally_ invited to the next Ladies’ Night) walked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional disclaimer: I have nothing but respect for those in uniform who uphold the motto ‘to protect and serve’. Sadly, there are those who bring disgrace to the rest of the police force. Brutality, misogyny, and racism exist amongst law enforcement, and it makes things more difficult both for civilians and for the good officers who really are just doing their jobs. 
> 
> I like to have meaning in some of my character names, for example, the name Andrew is the Latinised form of the Greek name Andreas, which comes from the word ‘andreios’, meaning ‘manly’/’masculine’. Millicent is from the Germanic name Amalasuintha, which comes from the elements ‘amal’ (work/labour) and ‘swinth’ (strong).
> 
> Next up: Broken ribs


	26. Broken Ribs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

He was tired. So tired of it all. He’d been running for so long, a part of him wanted to just lie down and never wake up.

He was tired of constantly looking over his shoulder.

He was tired of constantly waking up screaming, plagued by horrible visions of bloody deaths of people he didn’t even know.

He was tired of constantly having to fight for his life every time his old handlers caught up to him.

And, most of all, he was tired of not knowing who he was, or why he kept having flashes of a life that wasn’t his.

But right now, he was just tired. He’d been awake for so long, he couldn’t even remember when he’d last slept.

It had started with a nightmare about a man crawling out of a wrecked car, looking up at him and calling him by that name. Barnes. The man from the river had called him that name. James Buchanan Barnes. The man from the car had known him in that past life. And he’d punched that man in the face, so hard that it had shattered his nose and sent the shards of bone tumbling into his brain.

As he hurled into the sink of his derelict apartment, he got flashes of another, younger man, grinning at him from under a raised welding mask. His facial structure was very similar to the man from the car, and he had the distinct feeling that they were, in fact, the same man. And that that man had been his friend.

He heaved some more over the sink, even if he had nothing left in his stomach to throw up.

The following night, he’d just been about to drift off to sleep when he heard the sound of someone attempting to pick the lock on his door. He’d grabbed his go-bag and made his escape via the rickety fire escape, only to have to duck in and out of alleys and crowded streets when he was spotted and pursued.

He got himself onto a last-minute bus ride out of the city, and didn’t dare fall asleep for a second.

Now he was ready to fall asleep on his feet; he just needed a safe place to do so. And somehow, either HYDRA had tracked him to the motel he was checking out, or they’d just happened to be there for other reasons. Either way, they were now chasing him through more back alleys, all the way to the warehouse district of this new city.

And right into a trap.

* * *

Steve was tired.

He was tired of flying all over the world on nothing more than rumours and whispers, the ever-changing time zones wreaking havoc on his sleep cycle.

He was tired of coming back home to the pitying looks people thought he didn’t notice.

Mostly, he was tired of constantly finding himself having _just_ missed his best friend after he left. Every single lead they got either turned out to be a dead end or arrived too late for he and Sam (and sometimes Natasha) to successfully act on it.

So when their latest lead brought them to Chicago, Steve wasn’t expecting this to be any different. Except, as the Quinjet neared the city limits, they picked up police radio chatter of various explosions in the warehouse district, and he knew, _knew_ that Bucky was there.

Nat punched the throttle and send them speeding in the right direction, shouting that she was going to open the back hatch and drop them off once they found the action.

Sure enough, when Steve jumped out of the plane – Sam grabbing onto his arm and cursing because Steve had ignored the parachutes again – he was greeted with the sight of a couple dozen men in unmarked black tac gear converging on a single man taking cover behind a huge stack of crates. Steve lost visual before reaching the ground, but he was pretty sure he saw a flash of metal where the man’s left hand should be. Either that was a gun, or it was Bucky’s left hand. (Of course, there was an excellent chance that it was both.)

When Steve’s boots hit the ground, he was already holding up his shield to deflect the bullets, because there was no way that two men jumping out of a jet flying that low was going to go unnoticed, even in the middle of that mess. He didn’t hesitate to bring down the bastards attacking his best friend with brute force, smashing them in the face with his shield and his fists and boots and their own bullets, rebounding off his shield. Above his head, Natasha was firing the Quinjet’s weapons, and Sam was swooping down and knocking HYDRA agents (he presumed they were HYDRA) off their feet.

Another loud explosion rocked the ground, and Steve saw one agent lower a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, clearly the culprit behind the huge stack of crates blowing up. And there were more sticking out of the back of one of their black SUVs.

Steve knew they had to take those out, next. “Widow!” he barked into his comm, “The SUV to my ten o’clock! It’s full of ammo that needs to be taken out of play!”

_“On it.”_

Nat’s short response was soon followed by the Quinjet raining bullets down on the SUV, and Steve quickly dove for cover as the vehicle exploded spectacularly, sending metal shrapnel everywhere. He and Sam quickly reported that they were unscathed, but the same could not be said for the HYDRA agents. Many of them were lying dead or badly wounded on the ground.

Then he saw Bucky. He up on another stack of crates, was fighting off no less than six HYDRA agents, moving so quickly he was almost a blur, even to Steve’s enhanced sight. Even as Steve watched, one agent went down to a knife embedded in his thigh, and another was violently thrown to the ground an impressive distance away.

Steve was about to run up and help him out, but then he caught something in the corner of his eye. Perched on top of a forklift, another HYDRA agent with another rocket launcher (probably removed from the SUV before Natasha blew it to hell) was taking aim. “Bucky, MOVE!”

He hurled the shield at the agent, but was too late to stop him from firing the launcher. Bucky had turned and bolted at Steve’s shout, running along the length of crates, but the blast launched him off his feet, sending him tumbling through the air until he slammed into the closest warehouse, his chest hitting the sharp corner where the roof met the ceiling. Luckily, he was able to hang on instead of dropping to the ground below.

“Sam!”

_“I got him!”_

Sam didn’t even need Steve to tell him; he was already swooping down and landing next to where Bucky was struggling to hang on. Steve was too busy fighting his way through the remaining agents to keep watching, but from the sounds of things, Sam was having a spot of difficulty with getting Bucky to accept his help. Eventually, he convinced him to take the former pararescuman’s hand and allow himself to be pulled up, but there was a problem.

“Guys, he’s hurt!” Sam reported, “He’s having trouble breathing, and- shit, he just coughed up a little bit of blood. He’s going to need med- Hey, don’t look at me like that! This ain’t something you can just walk off, Serum or no Serum!”

Steve used a third crate stack to launch himself up onto the roof, although his landing was much less damaging. Bucky was on his feet, clutching a wicked-looking combat knife in his left hand and pressing his right hand to his chest. The blade wasn’t pointed at Sam, but that could change if Bucky thought Sam was getting to close (and judging by the fact that he hadn’t taken a single step closer, Sam had noticed that, too). He was struggling to breathe, and as Steve watched, he coughed roughly, staining his lips red.

“Bucky.”

Bucky flinched when he heard his name, and stared at Steve like a spooked animal about to bolt.

“Buck, do you know who I am?”

He got a jerky nod in response. “You- You’re Steve. I… I read about you in a museum.”

A museum. Did he visit the Smithsonian? “Do you remember who you are?”

Bucky’s laboured breathing sped up. “I… I remember pieces. Small things. Did… were we on a train?”

Steve swallowed hard at the memory. “Yeah. Yeah, we were. It was the last time we saw each other, before this year.”

“I fell-” Bucky coughed again, bringing up a fresh glob of blood.

“Buck, you need someone to look at that injury. I don’t think you’ll be able fix it on your own. You need a doctor.”

Bucky raised his knife hesitantly, looking terrified at the mere mention of the word ‘doctor’.

“I promise you, no one is going to hurt you where we’re going. I won’t let them. I swear it.”

Bucky didn’t look very convinced, but another cough brought him to his knees. “Ok- Okay.”

* * *

Steve would probably never get used to the twenty-first century. Maybe it was just exclusive Stark technology, but he still found himself surprised at all the resources Tony could pack into a Quinjet. Somehow, he’d managed to include practically an entire infirmary in there, complete with a small X-ray machine!

As the auto-pilot brought them back to Stark Tower, Steve had to convince Bucky to peel off his jacket and then let Sam cut his ratty T-shirt off (he never took his eyes off the scissors). He nearly threw up when he saw the dark bruising on Bucky’s chest. And again when he got a good look at the multiple layers of scarring on his body, especially where the metal shoulder met the flesh of his chest. Steve knew from personal experience that it took some real damage to leave a permanent scar on him; if Bucky had similar healing abilities, then he must have been hurt _really_ badly.

Natasha manipulated the X-ray machine and took some shots of Bucky’s torso. “He’s got five broken ribs,” she reported, “One’s gone and pierced the lung. That’s why he’s been coughing up blood. This is going to need surgery.”

Bucky paled at the mention of surgery. “N-n-no,” he gasped weakly, “No doctors.”

“This will kill you, Barnes,” Nat said sternly, “It might take a while, but it will.”

“The-they- They’ll hurt me.” The fear in his voice was completely genuine. Steve looked again at the arm, and wondered what other kinds of horrific things he’d experienced at the hands of HYDRA’s doctors.

Bucky had already been skittish around doctors and scientists, after Steve had pulled him off Zola’s operating table at Azzano. The man who’d once avidly followed all of Howard Stark’s new innovations in the news had paled at the thought of entering his lab, at least until he finally stepped in and saw that it looked more like a workshop than anything else. And he’d been nervous whenever he had to go to the infirmary, always making sure he could see what the doctors were doing to him. God only knew how bad his fear had gotten since then.

“They’re not going to hurt you, Buck,” Steve insisted, drawing his attention back to him, “They aren’t HYDRA doctors. They just want to help you, nothing more.”

But his words didn’t seem to be calming Bucky down. His obvious panic was clearly making breathing even more difficult for him, but he was still trying to sit up.

“You need to lie down,” Nat scolded him, “You’re going to make it worse!”

Bucky didn’t seem to even hear her. He was in the middle of a full-blown panic attack, fighting to get up off the bench.

“Sam, we need to sedate him! Steve, hold him down!”

Steve hated to do it, but he didn’t want Bucky to hurt himself. Bucky thrashed around in his grip, now screaming and sobbing, coughing up blood in between gasps. Natasha injected a syringe full of sedative into his right arm. “It’s okay, Sergeant,” she told him gently, “We’re not going to hurt you. I know it doesn’t feel like it yet, but you _are_ safe with us.” Her voice held a strange note of emotion that Steve couldn’t place.

Bucky’s sobs gradually slowed, even though his coughing grew worse. He didn’t fall unconscious, however; Natasha hadn’t given him enough to knock out a super-soldier, but it would keep him calm.

Steve practically cradled Bucky in his arms all the way back. “It’s going to be okay, Buck,” he told him, “Like Nat said, it may not feel that way now, but we’re taking you someplace safe.”

“Don’t…” Bucky coughed some more, staining his lips and teeth with even more blood, “Don’t want to run anymore…”

“You don’t have to. I promise, no more running.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will probably write a conclusion to this, separate from Whumptober, but I have three incomplete fics that I’ve put on hold for Whumptober, so those three will be taking priority. If you’re interested, one is a ‘Kamen Rider Drive’ fic, one is for ‘Legends of Tomorrow’, and one is a LoT/‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ crossover.
> 
> Next chapter: “I can’t walk.” Expect angst.


	27. "I can't walk."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this one’s a bit short, both in length and on detail.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

None of them saw it coming. For all that they had scores of enemies wanting to take out the Avengers, they hadn’t expected those enemies to have the balls to fly up in a pair of helicopters and start firing on the Tower.

Darcy was in the lab when it happened. More specifically, she was just about to walk into the lab to set up, and was behind the glass walls that were _supposed_ to be bulletproof when the attack happened. Instead, they shattered, showering her with sharp fragments.

When rescue personnel found her, she had a huge glass shard stuck in her back. They were very careful in removing it, but some of the damage was irreversible.

Bucky didn’t find out about his fiancée’s injury until after the fight was over, and then he was forced to sit through a debriefing before he was finally allowed to go to her side.

It was then that he got the bad news. “I can’t walk,” she told him brokenly, “The doctors said I’m paralyzed from the waist down. I’m never going to walk or run or dance again.”

To say that the next few months were an adjustment would be an understatement. Tony went all-out when it came to having their apartment renovated to accommodate Darcy’s wheelchair, and her healthcare plan as an employee of the Avengers Initiative covered all her medical costs. But no amount of money could change the pain she was in.

It came in two types: physical and emotional. The wound in her back still hurt her, even though she was getting physical therapy. But much more impactful was the emotional pain. She stopped listening to music, because when her favourite songs came up, she would automatically move to get up and dance, only to remember that she couldn’t, not anymore, and she would burst into tears. She stopped going to training sessions with Natasha, since she could no longer take part in hand-to-hand combat.

Bucky was by her side the whole way. He helped her in and out of bed, assisted with her physical therapy, and kept reminding her that she was still a strong, confident woman, that he was never going to stop loving her, and that she would get through this.

Their upcoming wedding was delayed as Darcy got used to her new situation. She became more practiced with her wheelchair. She started listening to music again. She changed her training lessons with Natasha to the use of guns and throwing knives, something Bucky and Clint were more than happy to help her with.

When the wedding day finally came, Darcy rolled her chair up a ramp so that she could meet Bucky’s eye level (she was quite pleased, since that basically made her ‘taller’ than she’d been before the attack). And when the time came for the first dance, he picked her right up out of the wheelchair and held her close in a bridal carry, which they felt was appropriate.

(Not to be outdone, her step-dad did the same thing for the father-daughter dance.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next: Severe illness.


	28. Severe Illness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late! Like Chapter 20, this was _not_ cooperating with me!
> 
> I seem to be torturing Darcy a lot, lately, aren’t I? Drowning, police brutality, and paralysis? Not that it’s a walk in the park for Bucky to watch.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

“Where is she?!”

The nearest person, a generic lab assistant in a white coat, froze like a deer in the headlights. Then again, so would anyone when confronted by a frantic Winter Soldier.

A nearby woman wearing a uniform identifying her as part of the building’s medical team spoke up: “Sergeant Barnes-”

“ _Where is she?!_ ” He and the other Avengers had been on their way back from an intel-gathering mission at a suspected HYDRA base (which had been abandoned and stripped by the time they got there) when they got the news of an incident in the labs. Apparently, there’d been an accident in the biochemical lab, causing the entire floor to be put into quarantine.

Jane’s lab was on that floor.

The elevator hadn’t even let him off on that floor, but delivered him to the next one up, instead.

“Sir, you need to calm down-”

“DON’T FUCKING TELL ME TO CALM DOWN!”

“Bucky?” Jane appeared from a nearby hallway, tears in her eyes and a tablet in her hand.

Bucky immediately ignored the medic and went straight to someone he trusted to give him some goddamn answers. “Jane, what happened? Where’s Darcy?”

Jane wiped some tears away, and Bucky felt his blood run cold. “I wasn’t in the lab; my mom called, and I went up to my room to check something she asked me about. Everyone’s been quarantined on that level, but I’ve been messaging with Darcy. We were just about to open a video chat when I heard you yelling.”

She ushered him into the room she’d previously been in, and opened the video chat.

Darcy had looked better. Bucky tried to fool himself into thinking that it was the lab lighting and the display settings on Jane’s tablet that made her look so pale. She was lying in a bed of some sort. “Hey Jane, everything’s- Bucky!”

Bucky feigned a reassuring grin. “Hey, Doll,” he greeted his fiancée, wincing at how badly his voice was trembling, “Heard you’ve been getting some excitement down there.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, it’s been really exciting. Some of the guys in biochem were working on a vaccine or a cure or something for a new virus, or something like that, and some idiot accidentally broke a vial of the virus – I still don’t know who.”

Bucky resolved to ask J.A.R.V.I.S. which idiot it was. As soon as the quarantine was lifted, he was going to ‘explain’ to them the consequences of putting his girl in danger like that.

Darcy coughed wetly, reminding Bucky of all the times Steve got really sick and he had to take care of him.

“Darcy?” Jane gasped, paling, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Y-yeah. Yeah, just a little tickle in my throat.” She coughed again, several more times.

“Doll, try telling saying that again. Maybe I’ll believe you the second time.” Bucky had to release his grip on Jane’s shoulder, not wanting to break her collarbone from squeezing it so hard, and instead moved his hand to the cheap plastic chair she was sitting in.

Darcy shuddered, looking away from her iPad. “Darcy…” Jane whispered, wiping away a stray tear.

“I’m sorry,” Darcy whimpered, “They don’t know if they’re going to be able to fix this in time. Some of the others are worse.”

At that, Bucky had to close his eyes and count to ten, focusing on controlling his breathing. This couldn’t be happening. _He_ was the one putting his life on the line on a regular basis, not Darcy. He didn’t know how he could survive losing her. Steve was the one who’d first pulled the pieces of him back out from the wreck of the Winter Soldier, but Darcy was the one who put them back together again.

* * *

Eventually, the quarantine on the lab floor was mostly lifted, save for one large room that had been converted into an infirmary. Jane and Bucky were able to actually see Darcy, albeit through a glass wall. Both handled seeing her rapidly declining state in very different ways. Jane coped with a mixture of avoidance and productivity, playing gofer for the biochemists working on a cure (“I was an intern myself, once, back in college.”). Bucky coped, for lack of a better term, by refusing to leave Darcy’s side. He read Darcy’s favourite books to her, discussed wedding plans with her, and generally just tried to keep her (and himself, to be perfectly honest) distracted from the reality of the situation.

When Darcy’s condition worsened, she started begging for one thing, and Bucky could never really say no to her.

A lot of staff members from the nearest hospital had been called over to help with the crisis, including a chaplain. Darcy wanted to get married. Right there, right then. It was scary, because it felt like admitting that she wasn’t going to live to see their planned wedding date. But she was insistent.

The impromptu ceremony was quick, with both Jane and Steve serving as witnesses. The marriage certificate had to be passed through a machine that irradiated it to kill any traces of the virus after Darcy finished signing it. Bucky couldn’t even kiss his bride.

The new Mrs. Barnes was being kept on life support when the scientists finally cracked the code. Bucky sat outside the containment area, holding Jane’s hand while Thor enveloped the both of them in his arms and Steve stood rigidly beside them, gripping Bucky’s shoulder. They watched as the doctors administered the apparent cure to all the patients (except for one, who had perished earlier thanks to having already been coming down with the flu when she was infected).

Darcy woke up to her husband sitting by her bed and holding her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually considered killing Darcy off in this one, but to be honest, I didn’t want to. I don’t think I’ll be able to bring myself to kill any of them.
> 
> Next up: Seizure. This one took some research until I could figure out which type and cause I would go with.


	29. Seizure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an alternate version of Chapter 27 (“I can’t walk.”), with a different injury. And like Chapter 27, it’s a lot shorter than most of the others.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

None of them saw it coming. For all that they had scores of enemies wanting to take out the Avengers, they hadn’t expected those enemies to have the balls to fly up in a pair of helicopters and start firing on the Tower.

Darcy was in the lab when it happened. More specifically, she was just approaching a lab that had a lot of volatile chemicals in the fume hood, and she was close enough to get blown off her feet when they exploded. She crashed into the wall headfirst, getting knocked out instantly.

Bucky didn’t find out about his girlfriend’s injury until after the fight was over, and then he was forced to sit through a debriefing before he was finally allowed to go to her side.

It was then that he got the bad news. She was in a coma, which she stayed in for three days. She had a depressed skull fracture, which caused some bleeding in the brain, but the surgeons were able to stop it and save her life.

When she woke up, she had a killer headache, and was prone to migraines afterwards, but was otherwise okay.

Or so they thought.

The first time she’d collapsed and started seizing, she’d been in the common kitchen, trying to perfect her mother’s homemade lasagna recipe (her baking was perfection, but she struggled with pasta dishes). Clint had been in there, just grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, and had caught her before she’d hit the floor.

After she suffered a second seizure, the Tower doctors diagnosed Darcy with Post-Traumatic Epilepsy, and prescribed her some antiepileptic drugs. But the drugs did not completely eliminate the seizures, so one doctor also recommended that she get a therapy dog. Since Bucky’s own therapist had suggested the same thing of him for his PTSD, Darcy insisted they both get their dogs together.

Darcy got a golden lab she named ‘BJ’ (Baker Junior, named for one of the dogs she rescued from the Puente Antiguo pet shop). Bucky wound up with a German Shepherd called Isolde. It took some extra work, finding two dogs that were not only up for the job, but were able to get along while living in close quarters.

While Isolde was trained to calm Bucky down when he was anxious and prevent panic attacks, BJ could alert others when Darcy had a seizure, pull her to a safer area if necessary (there was one time when she collapsed just as she was starting to cross the street, and he’d dragged her back onto the sidewalk), and help her ‘wake up’ after a seizure.

Both dogs marked a major turning point in the couple’s life. They went everywhere their owners went, and fit into life in the Tower.

One night, Bucky and Darcy were enjoying a lazy night in with their dogs. Darcy was rubbing BJ’s belly when she noticed a small drawstring bag tied to his collar. “What’s that you got there, buddy?” she cooed, glancing up at Bucky curiously. When he shrugged, she detached the bag from the collar and tugged it open.

Inside was a beautiful diamond ring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s to all the service dogs out there, who do wonders for their humans every day.
> 
> PTE, or Post-Traumatic Epilepsy, is a form of epilepsy caused, as the name suggests, by traumatic brain injuries. I Googled a lot of different types and causes of seizures. On a happier note, I finally figured out why I sometimes jerk awake while falling asleep (it’s called a hypnic jerk, a kind of brief myoclonic seizure _not_ linked to epilepsy).
> 
> Next time, on ‘Whumptober 2018: WinterShock’: Caregiver. This one’s already written, so it’ll be up less than twelve hours from now.


	30. Caregiver

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve always known what I was going to do with this one. This honestly could have also been used for the ‘Exhaustion’ prompt back in Chapter 19, but I felt that this scene fit this prompt better.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.

Bucky fumbled and dropped the keys when he went to unlock the door. Grimacing, he shifted his grocery bag so that he could carry it in one arm and stooped down to pick them up. Black spots appeared on the edge of his vision, and he blinked them away. He was so damn tired, but he couldn’t afford to sleep right now. He had too much to do.

His whole body ached. The bruises from last night’s fight in the ring were really giving him trouble, now. It would have been easier to bear if he’d won, but he’d been tired then, too, and off his game. His opponent had walked away with the win and the prize money. Money that Bucky had needed. So he’d picked up an extra shift lugging around boxes and such down at the docks today. He’d been reluctant to be away from the apartment for so long, but old Mrs. Willis across the hall promised she’d take care of things until he got back.

He shuffled his way in, dropping the grocery bag on the first flat surface he reached, and made his way to the bedroom. The place was cold, and he gulped. The heating was out, again. And night hadn’t even fallen, yet, so it was bound to get colder after the sun set.

Tonight was going to be yet another long night. Bucky _hated_ winter.

Old Mrs. Willis was in the bedroom, sitting next to the bed and holding a bowl of watery soup while Steve shakily fed himself with a spoon. His pale complexion was made even paler by the bout of pneumonia he’d been fighting off, and when he opened his mouth to greet Bucky, he let out a series of harsh, wet coughs instead.

Bucky rushed over, rubbing Steve’s back until the coughs subsided. “Easy,” he murmured, “Just take it easy, okay?”

Steve coughed once more, thankfully only just the once. “I _have_ been taking it easy. I’ve barely even left this _bed_.” He had to stop and take a few strained breaths after speaking.

“Yeah, well, _keep_ taking it easy.” He turned to Mrs. Willis. “Thank you for watching him. I don’t know how well he would have managed on his own.”

“ _He_ is sitting right here.”

Mrs. Willis smiled kindly. “Oh, it’s quite alright, dearies.”

“Are you sure we didn’t take you away from anything important?” Mrs. Willis did mending and occasionally laundry for extra money.

“Oh, not at all. I was able to do all of today’s work while Stevie was sleeping.”

Once he’d seen Mrs. Willis out the door and back into her own apartment, Bucky got to work on making dinner. He hadn’t been able to get much, even though he’d spent most of today’s earnings in his one trip to the grocery store. Steve slept feverishly, but when he woke up, Bucky had a small meal ready, a bit more substantial than soup.

Steve puked it all up half an hour later.

The heat still wasn’t working when night fell, so Bucky stayed in bed with Steve instead of his usual spot on the couch (they couldn’t afford a second bed), sponging the sweat off his face, chest, and back, and coaching him through his breathing.

He got maybe half an hour of sleep before the sun rose the next morning. Then he got up, got redressed, and started to head out to work.

He nearly collided with Johnny Willis, Mrs. Willis’s grandson, as he left the apartment. As it stood, he stumbled and collided with the wall in order to avoid colliding with Johnny.

His vision swam, and he had to lean on the wall until the hallway stopped spinning. His knees were shaking, and he wondered how he was going to work (his current job involved lugging heavy boxes at a nearby butcher shop owned by a kind Romanian couple) when his legs felt like they were going to give out. He _needed_ to work, or they wouldn’t have enough money for rent, and he and Steve would both be out on the streets.

“Hey!” Something was shaking him. It was Johnny. “Are you okay?” The gangly teen’s face was going in and out of focus. “Hang on, I’m going to get my Gran.”

“S’fine,” Bucky protested, trying to stand up straight. His knees promptly buckled.

The last thing he heard was Johnny calling frantically for his grandmother before everything went black.

* * *

Bucky woke to the feeling of fingers running through his hair. It was a familiar sensation, but one he hadn’t felt since he’d moved out. It couldn’t be… “Ma?”

The fingers stilled briefly, then resumed their ministrations. “You scared us there, Jamie,” his mother’s voice chided, “When was the last time you slept?”

Bucky groaned and opened his eyes. Sure enough, he saw his mother’s worried face above his. He looked around and saw that he was lying on the ratty couch that came with the apartment, with his head in his mother’s lap and a threadbare blanket thrown over him. “What time’s it?” he asked, his voice rough from sleep.

“It’s almost noon, Dragă,” Ma told him, using a term of endearment that she’d picked up from her parents.

Almost _noon_?!

Bucky shot up, cursing. “I’m late!” he gasped, trying to untangle the blanket from his legs, “Eusebiu’s gonna be pissed if I’m not-”

“Language!” Ma scolded again, “And don’t worry about Eusebiu. Johnny’s already been down and told him you’re sick.”

“M’not sick,” he argued.

“Well, you aren’t well,” Mrs. Willis interjected. Bucky hadn’t even noticed her presence, but there she was, sitting on a chair and daintily mending a shirt. “You took a funny turn and collapsed right outside that door, and Johnny and I had to practically carry you back inside! I’m nearly eighty years old, boy, so I’m not fit for that kind of work anymore!”

Bucky looked curiously over at his mother, who answered his unspoken question. “Mrs. Willis called me from the nearest payphone after Steve gave her my number. It’s a Saturday, so Rebecca was able to cover my shift at the bakery.”

Bucky swallowed. “I’m sorry. I… I don’t know what hap-” He was cut off by a huge yawn that came out of nowhere.

Ma frowned disapprovingly. “I’m not going to ask you again, Jamie. When was the last time you slept?”

“Last night,” he insisted, “I got what rest I could, in between makin’ sure Stevie wasn’t going to get too hot or too cold in the night. And he threw up at one point, so I had to wash the bowl out…” He sighed, rubbing his face. “He wasn’t as bad as the night before; I think he’s getting’ better.”

Ma reached out and cupped his chin, making him wince as she put pressure on a nasty bruise. “Since Steve has apparently been in bed all week, I assume you got this in a boxing match, and not a street fight?”

Bucky nodded. “Yeah. Day before yesterday. Shouldn’t have bothered, though. I lost that one. Couldn’t focus, I guess.”

Mrs. Willis looked at him searchingly. “So you had a fight two days ago, and have spent the rest of your time either working your tail off or taking care of your friend. When was the last time you actually got a full night’s sleep?”

Her question had Bucky wracking his brain for an answer. Steve’s cough had gotten bad enough overnight that Bucky had skipped morning Mass to take care of him… “Last Saturday night,” he admitted, suddenly feeling twice as tired.

His mother tutted and tugged on his shoulder, pulling him to lie back down on the couch. “Oh, Dragă… You know that’s not healthy.”

“Yeah, well, what else can I do?” he snapped, “Just sit back and watch while my best friend slowly dies? I don’t know how his mother managed, workin’ and takin’ care of him at the same time. I’ve got to make sure he eats and keep his fever down, and I’ve gotta bring in enough money to pay the rent, else we’re out on the street. I’m all he’s got, now.”

Ma gave him a sad smile and stroked his hair back. “Oh, Jamie. The two of you still have us. Your sister and I are always more than happy to help. And don’t give me any of that nonsense about being a burden, either, Dragă.”

Bucky sighed, closing his eyes. He was _so tired_.

Ma resumed running her fingers through his hair. “Just rest, Jamie. We’ve got everything under control.”

Deciding that there was no fighting it (never in his life had Winnifred Barnes lost an argument with her own children), he repositioned himself so that he was lying on his side, and let his mother’s ministrations lull him back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dragă: Romanian term of endearment, like ‘Darling’. I don’t know if it’s a general term or if it’s exclusively a romantic term. (If it is, and you know it, please tell me!)
> 
> Like many fanfic authors, I’m incorporating Sebastian Stan’s Romanian heritage into my headcanon of Bucky’s family history. In this case, Winnifred Barnes’s parents were Romanian immigrants who gave her an English name when she was born after they moved to America, and she spoke exclusively Romanian until she started school.


	31. Showdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY _VERY_ BELATED HALLOWEEN! We had a record number of forty-six kids coming to our house this year, including an Iron Man, a Deadpool, and two Batmans (Batmen?). One little Batman was very … ‘enthusiastic’, to put it nicely, marching _right_ into the house and trying to grab _at least_ twice as much candy as we were handing out per child – did nobody ever teach him ‘Please’, ‘Thank you’, or ‘Stranger Danger’?!
> 
> SO sorry this is so late! I had a really hard time with this, and wound up changing the whole thing and completely starting over on the eighth. And the last half of the final scene literally took me weeks – some days, I was only moving forward by one sentence. I’m not entirely sure if it fits the prompt, but in my own defence, ‘showdown’ is a pretty broad concept.
> 
> This takes place in the same continuity as Chapter 26 (‘Broken Ribs’). Also in this continuity is a collection of WinterShock ficlets that I’ve been working on since this past summer, and an accompanying story of how Bucky joined the Avengers in this series (part of which has since been made into Chapter 26, so the rest will be the follow-up I promised). This takes place after Chapter 14, at least, of said WinterShock ficlet collection (that chapter may be expanded into multiple chapters).
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.
> 
> DEDICATION: This chapter is dedicated to the great Stan Lee. None of this would have been possible without you. EXCELSIOR!

He both sees it coming a mile away and never sees it coming. Short-term, the sound of the gym doors slamming open as Tony Stark charges through them is a complete surprise, making him jump and reach for one of his ever-present knives. In the long-term, however, he’s been expecting this for weeks, now.

He’d remembered killing Howard and Maria Stark, and that he’d known the man in question, just days before he was nearly killed in a HYDRA ambush and rescued by Steve and his friends. Just a week before he came to live on the Avengers Initiative Compound after spending a few days in Stark Tower’s infirmary with broken ribs. But he hadn’t remembered Howard’s _name_ , and made the connection to the man who was basically giving him a place to live, rent-free, until he’d been there for about a month. Once he’d remembered…

Steve had sworn to keep it a secret, even though Bucky hadn’t asked him to – quite the opposite, actually. He wanted to come clean, to walk up to Tony Stark, confess to killing the man’s parents, and let him take out the revenge he deserved. But he never told Steve that.

And now he won’t need to, because when Stark’s furious eyes lock onto Bucky, he knows the other man has found out. He doesn’t know how; it doesn’t really matter.

So after he gets over the initial fight-or-flight instinct, Bucky stands down and allows Stark to slam him into the back wall.

“You killed them,” Stark growls, just confirming what Bucky already knows, “You fucking _killed_ them, you sonofabitch!”

“STARK!”

And of course, there’s Steve, already moving to pull Stark away.

“Stark, let him go!”

It takes the combined efforts of Steve and Wilson to separate Bucky and Stark, partly because Bucky makes no effort of his own to fight the billionaire inventor off. He deserves whatever the hell Stark wants to do to him.

“He killed my parents!” Stark yells, shocking everyone, “Those HYDRA files we got on our last raid?! There’s a surveillance video of him doing it!” He’s stopped trying to lunge at Bucky, but his eyes never move from his target. “Did you know?!” he demands, “Did you remember killing them when you moved in under my roof?!”

Bucky closes his eyes. Swallow. “Started remembering a day or two before Steve found me,” he admits, feeling exhausted even though he was into his workout when Stark barged in, “Didn’t remember a name… didn’t know who he was to me or you until ‘bout a month after.” He swallowed again. “It’s nowhere near enough, but I’m sorry.”

“You’re right,” Stark growls, “It’s _not_ enough. I wanna know _why_.”

“Tony-”

“Shut it, Rogers! I know why _he_ did it, HYDRA told him, and he had no choice but to obey. I _know_ that part already. I want to know why those bastards sent him after them in the first place, why they made it look like an accident, and why he waited so fucking long to say anything!”

Steve, who’s been restraining one of Stark’s arms, now moves in between the two. “Look, I told him not to, okay? Not yet. I wanted to figure out how to break-”

“ _YOU KNEW_?!”

Letting go of Stark’s arm was a mistake, because that free fist suddenly slams into Steve’s face, and Wilson has a hell of a fight on his hands keeping the other arm restrained.

“Get off, Wilson! I’m not done! You knew it was him?! You knew it wasn’t an accident?!”

By this point, nearly the entire team has assembled in the gym, stopping dead at the sight. Some look reluctant to get involved, but Rhodes hustles over to help break it up.

Steve sighs, defeated. “I’m sorry, Tony,” he says sadly, “He’s my friend.”

“So was I,” Tony snarls.

After that last, pain-filled comment, Tony storms out of the room, with a concerned Rhodey trailing behind him. An awkward silence hangs over the room until Steve reaches out to try and comfort his best friend, only to find himself being brushed off, instead.

Bucky goes straight to his and Steve’s shared apartment, locks his bedroom door behind him, and stands in one place, swaying slightly, before dropping to his knees. A choked sob echoes throughout the room, followed by several more.

Ever since realising that he’d killed Tony Stark’s parents, he’s been unable to _look_ at the man without thinking of them. Of the crunching sound Howard’s nose had made as Bucky’s fist shattered it. Of the feeling of Maria’s pulse under his fingers as he strangled her to death. Those memories would swirl around in his head, threatening to overwhelm him. He’s held them back, kept them contained, until he’s alone.

It’s strangely… relieving, though. The fact that Stark finally knows the truth. Because every time he looked at the man, he was overwhelmed not only by the guilt, but also by the urge to just blurt it out, to confess. Whatever punishment Stark comes up with, he’ll take it. He won’t fight it. He deserves it all, and worse.

“Bucky?”

Convincing Steve of that will be the real challenge, however.

“Babe, it’s me.”

Wait, that isn’t Steve’s voice on the other side of his door. It’s Darcy’s.

Shakily, Bucky rises to his feet, and it actually takes him a few tries to unlock his door, his hands are trembling so badly. His girlfriend stands there, her posture deliberately open and non-threatening. “Hey,” she says softly, “I heard about what happened. Figured you could use someone to talk to, or just… be there.”

She holds out her arms, opening herself up for a hug. Bucky freezes, unsure if he should really do this. It’s quite often that he feels like he didn’t deserve her love, or anyone else’s, for that matter. He’s spent the past seventy years killing in the service of the very same people who’d tortured him and killed many of his friends. He feels like he’s all but literally drenched in blood; anyone he becomes close with would be tainted by association. And while most of these people already have some sort of taint on them, Darcy is innocent. Even more than he doesn’t deserve her love and acceptance, she doesn’t deserve the danger that comes from being with an utter wreck like him.

Bucky stands stock still for several seconds in hesitation, and Darcy still doesn’t move. She doesn’t lower her arms or walk away, but neither does she step forward and hug him. She’s waiting until he’s ready.

He doesn’t deserve the comfort she’s offering. But he feels like if he stands there much longer, he’s going to fall apart completely. So he takes one hesitant step, then another, until his chest bumps up against hers, and then her arms are wrapped tightly around him.

The tears come again. “He was my friend,” he whispers brokenly, “He was my _friend_. Why didn’t I stop? Why didn’t I recognise him?”

Darcy runs one hand up and down his back. “You had no chance to recognise him, Babe. I saw the footage… Tony insisted on showing it to me before I came down here, or he was going to have Friday block my access to your apartment. You only interacted with him for a few seconds before you- before he… uh…”

“Before I murdered him,” Bucky fills in hollowly, “You can say it.”

“Before he died. And you didn’t know him for as long as you knew Steve, plus he’d gotten really old, so he didn’t even look like the Howard Stark you knew. If it took you a full fight against _Steve_ to realise you knew him, then Howard didn’t stand a chance of triggering the same reaction. And none of that is on you.”

A shudder runs through him. “You don’t know-” He has to take a breath. “I remember killing them. Every second of it. I can’t get it out of my head.”

“C’mon.” Darcy gently steers him over to the bed, sits him down, and continues rubbing his back as he tries to get his breathing back under control.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he eventually gasps, “I should leave. I shouldn’t be living in Stark’s place after killing his parents. It’s not right. I- I shouldn’t be alive. _They_ should. Not me.” He licks his dry lips. “Stark could have killed me out there. And I… I would have let him.”

Darcy’s hand stills on his back. “Bucky… I-” Her words seem to get caught in her throat. Bucky doesn’t blame her. He knows that she worries about him, about his often-fragile state of mind. The news that he’s willing to die to give Stark some form of revenge or closure can’t be something she likes hearing.

And she doesn’t even know the worst of it. After making the connection between Howard and his son, Bucky had retreated to his room and, after a brief breakdown like the one he’d been having when Darcy came in, had picked up a gun and stuck the barrel in his mouth. He’d spent hours trying to work up the guts to pull the trigger, until Steve came back from a mission and found him. _That_ was how his best friend found out.

Darcy’s phone suddenly chimes, breaking the silence. She jumps, and digs the device out of her pocket to read the text message. “Nat wants to talk to you,” she says softly, “But you can take whatever time you need, first.”

* * *

He does need to take some more time. A lot. It’s not until the next morning that he works up the courage to walk out the door of the apartment. Steve’s waiting in the living room, with big, wide puppy dog eyes. He tries to apologise, but Bucky waves him off. He does, however, allow Steve to follow him and Darcy out to the briefing room Natalia wanted him to meet her in.

When they get there, Bucky stops dead in the doorway, because Natalia isn’t alone. Clint Barton’s presence is a surprise, but only because he’s recently retired from the Avengers and has been living on a farm somewhere in Iowa. Tony Stark’s, on the other hand, is a complete shock, given how he was trying to pummel Bucky yesterday.

Stark clearly is not expecting them, either. He shoots up from his chair. “What the hell?!” he growls, “What the fuck do you want, Barnes?”

“I asked him to come here,” Natalia tells him bluntly, “I’ve got something you both need to hear.” She slaps two things on the table: a flash drive and a good, old-fashioned hardcopy file folder. The former is shoved in Stark’s direction, the latter in Bucky’s.

Bucky takes the folder with hesitation while Stark plugs the drive into something on the side of the table, pulling up a holographic display of several items, including a picture that Bucky recognises as being of Howard and Maria Stark’s crashed car. He shudders, and repeated the action when he opens his folder and sees the same photograph looking back at him.

“What the hell is this, Romanoff?” Stark growls again, even as he spreads out the various files in the air in front of him.

Natalia tips her head in Barton’s direction, and he begins explaining: “Nat and I found this shortly after S.H.I.E.L.D. fell. We weren’t sure what to make of it at first, but combined with the intel from your last raid, I’d say it’s a full report on the Stark assassination. The stuff you got centers on the actual event, but this information has more of the behind the scenes stuff. Such as which HYDRA agents came up with the plan, and why they chose to carry it out at that time, rather than decades earlier.”

Natalia takes over. “We’ll let you look over the details later, but after yesterday’s blowup, I reached out to an old contact and managed to get files on every agent involved. Some are dead, but this…” She holds up another flash drive. “…is everything I have on the three who are still alive.”

Silence falls over the briefing room as the pieces begin to fit together.

Darcy’s the first one to voice what they’re all coming to realise. “You want these two to team up and take down the rest of the douchebags involved.”

Natalia nods. “I know you want revenge, Stark, and no one wants to deny you that, but I think I speak for all of us here when I say that we’d prefer it if you directed that revenge elsewhere.”

Bucky shifts uncomfortably, and he’s aware that Darcy has noticed. Natalia and Barton, too (damn spies). Maybe Steve. He’s not sure about Stark.

“These three HYDRA agents are just as guilty in your parents’ murder – even more so, really, because _they_ were fully aware of what they were doing and making their own decisions. And I’ll be perfectly honest, here: none of us here in this facility wants to have to deal with the two of you at odds over this.” She shrugs. “I figure the best way to avoid that was to give you a common goal.”

Barton throws in his own two cents’ worth: “I’m with Tash. I’m not even living here anymore, but I sure as hell don’t want to get caught up in some Avengers civil war over this.”

Bucky keeps his eyes glued to the folder in his hands, even though he can see Darcy looking back and forth between him and Stark. “It sounds like a good idea to me,” she says, “Well? Can you two work together on this and not try and kill each other?” She’s definitely looking directly at Stark as she says this.

There’s a small part of Bucky that wants to say screw it, just let Stark kill him. But here in his hands are the names of the HYDRA scum who made Howard’s death possible. If he was the deadly weapon, they were the ones who aimed him and pulled the trigger. And they deserve just as much punishment as he does. If he helps bring that punishment about, then at least he’ll balance the scales a little before his own time comes to die.

But none of this will work out if Stark decides he can’t work with Bucky. There’s a long, tense silence, as everyone waits for Stark’s answer.

Finally, Stark, who’s been distracting himself from all their stares by flicking through the second set of files, gives his response. “Fine. Yeah, I can hold off if it means getting these bastards. We’ll see about not killing him when this is all over.”

It’s not exactly the answer the others are looking for, but it’ll do for Bucky, and the rest of them will have to settle, for now. Closing the folder, he hesitates for a few seconds, then slowly offers his hand to Stark.

This silence is even longer and tenser. Bucky figures he maybe should have said something, first, but now it feels like if he so much as _breathes_ wrong, Stark will take back his decision.

Stark is even slower in accepting the hand than Bucky was in offering it, and he lets go after barely a second. “Fine. Now, how about we get started, before I change my mind?”

With that statement, the whole room seems to breathe a sigh of relief.

It’s not perfect, and it’s not going to be easy. Someone’s probably going to insist that he and Stark are supervised to make sure no one kills or maims anybody (well, anybody they aren’t supposed to be killing or maiming). And it’s going to be a tense partnership, no question about it. But for the first time since coming to the Avengers’ Initiative, Bucky feels like he’s actually giving something back, instead of doing nothing but living there and eating their food. Oh, he’s been helping train the newer members (and some of the older ones, for that matter), and he’s provided what little HYDRA intel he can, but it still felt rather one-sided.

Now, however, he’s going to hunt down some of the scum who personally contributed to the hell that was the past seventy years of his life, and – more importantly – hopefully help one of the Avengers get some closure for his parents’ murder, and further the team’s overall goal of eradicating HYDRA.

Those sons of bitches have no fucking clue what’s about to hit them.

 

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been one hell of a month and a bit (almost 2 months). I think this is the most I’ve ever written and posted over a single month. I’m thinking I’ll try and get an earlier start with the actual writing next year. Like, August, if that’s at all possible.
> 
> Well, now that this is done, I’m off to work on my other 3 WIPs. Unfortunately, this means that you probably won’t be seeing anything MCU-related from me until all three are _done_ (allowing for random plot bunnies that bite me and can be written up quickly). If you like ‘DC’s Legends of Tomorrow’, ‘Kamen Rider Drive’, or ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, however, keep an eye out for updates on ‘Reawakening’, ‘Two For The Price Of One’, and ‘The Cold Factor’, in that order.
> 
> That said, I _will_ be continuing the AU that this chapter and Chapter 26 are part of, as well as the Squib!Darcy AU and a follow-up of Chapter 18. I actually have some scenes written out for all three of them, so here is a small preview of each:
> 
> For the still-unnamed AU:
> 
> _The first time James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes meets Darcy Victoria Lewis, he’s getting a tour of the new Avengers facility from Steve and the guy with the wings (Wilson, his name is Sam Wilson), and she’s rushing down the hallway with a stack of papers – topped by four cups of coffee in a cardboard takeout tray – with a whole bagel stuffed in her mouth. How she manages to move at that speed without spilling a drop is pretty impressive… until she doesn’t, and the tray slips off its precarious perch._
> 
> For the ‘Hostage’ follow-up, titled ‘Why Christine Everhart is going DOWN’:
> 
> _But Vanity Fair was **going down**. They had been late to the game in reporting on the matter, but the following morning, they become the most-read coverage of the story by publishing uncensored copies of the photo along with Rebecca’s full name and her school picture. Darcy’s identity was also made public, despite the lengths the Avengers had gone to in order to keep her and Bucky’s marriage a secret from anyone who wasn’t a member of the Initiative or a close relative._
> 
> _The worst part, however, was the article. Christine Everhart had probably been waiting on this for years, ever since she’d been explicitly banned from getting a personal interview with any Avenger or their associates. In a move worthy of Rita Skeeter, she wrote a scathing piece about how dangerous it was to be around a target of such ruthless terrorist organisations as HYDRA, and made it very clear that the Winter Soldier’s daughter was such a target. She called the Avengers reckless for allowing such a potential danger to mingle with vulnerable, defenceless children and putting the entire school in peril, citing the previous day’s hostage crisis as an example._
> 
> _The fact that said hostage-taker had actually been targeting a different child altogether went completely unmentioned._
> 
> For ‘Dahlia Parkinson is Dead’:
> 
> _She was balancing her load in her arms while walking back to the Tower when someone stepped into her path. Darcy swore and had to side-step like mad to avoid the person, only for them to block her way again. “Excuse me, I’m trying to-”_
> 
> _Her words died in her throat. She knew this woman. It had been a long time; this woman was no longer the teenager who’d turned her back on her, but there was no mistaking her. Her long, brown hair was swept up into a bun, and those cold, green eyes were narrowed dangerously, looking right at Darcy._
> 
> _“Hello, Dahlia. Are you trying to tell me you can’t spend five minutes of your precious time to say hello?”_
> 
> _Darcy swallowed. She knew, she **knew** this wasn’t over! “Hello, Pansy. What are you doing here?”_
> 
> That’s all she wrote for now! Spectre out!


End file.
